Posts Tagged ‘stellar nursery’
Cat’s Paw
Credit: ESO
Resembling a cat’s paw from Earth, this glowing cloud of hydrogen gas spans 50 light-years. The Cat’s Paw Nebula, or NGC 6334, is a vast, active stellar nursery. It is also home to some of the most massive stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. These stars are only a few million years old; just younglings in the universe. Our Sun, by comparison, is 4.5 billion years old and is considered middle-aged. Massive stars form in this cloud because of the abundance of gas and dust; both ingredients for making baby stars. The massive stars will only live a short time however. In just tens of millions of years, these stars will explode in supernovae. These blasts will spread gas far and wide. The shockwaves will squeeze gas and dust together creating areas for new stars to form.
Valentine Rose
Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
Bright, young stars form a rosebud-shaped nebula in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope known as NGC 7129. In this Valentine’s Day image, thousands of stars are being formed in this dense cloud of gas and dust. Most stars, including our Sun, are thought to have formed in such clouds. Spitzer’s infrared camera allows us to peer inside this cloud.
Starry Presents
Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O’Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee
Here is a present to put under the Christmas Tree Nebula from yesterday. In this new image of the star-forming region R136 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope WFC3, astronomers take a close look at this region of the 30 Doradus Nebula. The region is only a few million years old. R136 is 170,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. 30 Doradus is the largest, most active star-making region astronomers know of.
Hooded in the mist
Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, and J. Hester (Arizona State University)
This nebula is known as the Omega or Swan Nebula but look close. Can you see the hooded figure in the mist?
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By The Riviera Times
By CritterKeeper
By Sarah Q. Brett