Starry Swift

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley), and The Hub­ble Her­itage Team (STScI/AURA)

This week, let’s explore the fan­tasy lands of the Carina Neb­ula. Giant crea­tures of glow­ing dust and mon­ster stars inhabit this area.

In this part of the image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, I see a swift dart­ing down out of the sky.

The giant cloud of the Carina Neb­ula is a place where stars are born. Ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion stream­ing out from the region’s big stars shape and light up the gas and dust. Strong winds from these stars push the gas and form swirling pat­terns in the cloud. The neb­ula is about 7,500 light-years away toward the con­stel­la­tion Carina the Keel. Carina is a con­stel­la­tion in the south­ern hemi­sphere. it is part of an older con­stel­la­tion group called Argo Navis, after the ship that car­ried Jason and the Arg­onauts.

Comments

Theresa 21-09-2009, 10:29

This is a cool web­site. Thanks!

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