Reaching Fingers

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O’Connell (Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia), F. Paresce (National Insti­tute for Astro­physics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Uni­ver­si­ties Space Research Association/Ames Research Cen­ter), the WFC3 Sci­ence Over­sight Com­mit­tee, and the Hub­ble Her­itage Team (STScI/AURA)

Ghostly fin­gers of gas and dust reach up to grab a glit­ter­ing, young stars of NGC 3603 in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Telescope.

Explore the image. NGC 3603 is one of the most active star-making fac­to­ries that astronomers know of. Most of the stars were born about the same time. A vari­ety of stars with dif­fer­ent masses, tem­per­a­tures and col­ors can be found through­out the clus­ter. NGC 3603 also con­tains some of the most mas­sive stars known. These mon­ster stars live fast, burn­ing through their hydro­gen fuel quickly. They die young in huge super­nova explo­sions after liv­ing less than a mil­lion years.

Also explore the wispy clouds of gas sur­round­ing the clus­ter. This neb­ula gave birth to the clus­ter. The new suns send out a pow­er­ful stel­lar winds and ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion cre­at­ing a huge cav­ity in the gas and dust cloud.

NGC 3603 is located right in the back­yard; only 20,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Carina, the Keel of the myth­i­cal ship Argo Navis. Because the star clus­ter is so close to Earth, astronomers can get a good idea of how stars form and die.