Posts Tagged star clusters
Celestial Fireworks
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)
This spectacular Hubble image came out Tuesday, and I just LOVE IT.
Like a July 4 fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust—the raw material for new star formation. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603.
This environment is not as peaceful as it looks. Ultraviolet radiation and violent stellar winds have blown out an enormous cavity in the gas and dust enveloping the cluster, providing an unobstructed view of the cluster.
Most of the stars in the cluster were born around the same time but differ in size, mass, temperature, and color. The course of a star’s life is determined by its mass, so a cluster of a given age will contain stars in various stages of their lives, giving an opportunity for detailed analyses of stellar life cycles. NGC 3603 also contains some of the most massive stars known. These huge stars live fast and die young, burning through their hydrogen fuel quickly and ultimately ending their lives in supernova explosions.
Star clusters like NGC 3603 provide important clues to understanding the origin of massive star formation in the early, distant universe. Astronomers also use massive clusters to study distant starbursts that occur when galaxies collide, igniting a flurry of star formation. The proximity of NGC 3603 makes it an excellent lab for studying such distant and momentous events.
This Hubble Space Telescope image was captured in August 2009 and December 2009 with the Wide Field Camera 3 in both visible and infrared light, which trace the glow of sulfur, hydrogen, and iron.
The Stars Behind the Curtain
Credit: ESO (European Southern Observatory)
It’s images like this, with a thousand thousand cosmic Christmas trees a-twinkling, that make me wish I could be out there, floating on the night. (Preferably with some protective gear and a breathing apparatus.)
ESO is releasing a magnificent VLT image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603, in which stars are continuously being born. Embedded in this scenic nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters of young, massive stars in our Milky Way, which therefore serves as an excellent “local” analogue of very active star-forming regions in other galaxies. The cluster also hosts the most massive star to be “weighed” so far.
NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their great distance from us. [Read more.]
The Bubble and M52
Credit & Copyright: Tony Hallas
A fascinating photo from last week’s APOD: autumn colors, sprinkled copiously with stars.
To the eye, this cosmic composition nicely balances the Bubble Nebula at the upper right with open star cluster M52. The pair would be lopsided on other scales, though. Embedded in a complex of interstellar dust and gas and blown by the winds from a single, massive O-type star, the Bubble Nebula (aka NGC 7635) is a mere 10 light-years wide. On the other hand, M52 is a rich open cluster of around a thousand stars. The cluster is about 25 light-years across. Seen toward the northern boundary of Cassiopeia, distance estimates for the Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex are around 11,000 light-years, while star cluster M52 lies nearly 5,000 light-years away.
Merope
The Merope Nebula, image © Russell Croman
This is another beautiful image by Russell Croman. Merope is a star in the Pleiades cluster. A large (desktop-sized) version can be downloaded at the link above.
The brilliant star Merope is one of the members of the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, a cluster of young, hot stars about 400 light years from earth. Intense bluish light from Merope illuminates wisps of cosmic dust which appear to swaddle the young stars in blankets of nebulosity.
Downtime Two-fer
Monday night this site was down, and yesterday I was busy and away from my desk, so here’s a two-fer. Sorry about that!
Rising from the ashes
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on March 24, 2009
This image really caught my eye (in a sea of other astro-pix, I might add.) It reminds me of a phoenix rising, or sparks rising from a fire (the stars), something magical, something higher and bigger than we are….
Astro-philatelics, part 46
Posted by Danielle in Currency & Postage on January 7, 2009
We’re just starting the International Year of Astronomy, and in a similar vein, these Australian stamps from 1992 celebrate the International Space Year .
Portrait of a Nebula
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on December 18, 2008
A lot of times what will draw me to an astronomical photo is color; whether false- or true-color, the composition of hue and intensity is usually what catches my eye. Today’s image is one of those — an incredible array of smoldering russets and pale periwinkles, punctuated by stars and darker streaks of dust. Enjoy.
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and it’s almost easy to miss stars of the open cluster IC 1590. But, formed within the nebula, that cluster’s young, massive stars ultimately power the pervasive nebular glow. The eye-catching shapes looming in this colorful portrait of NGC 281 are sculpted columns and dense dust globules seen in silhouette, eroded by intense, energetic winds and radiation from the hot cluster stars. If they survive long enough, the dusty structures could also be sites of future star formation. Sometimes called the Pacman Nebula because of its overall shape in wider-field views, NGC 281 is about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This composite image was made through narrow-band filters and shows emission from the nebula’s hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms in green, red, and blue hues. It spans over 80 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 281.
100,000 Orbits
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on August 14, 2008
This image released on Monday commemorates the 100,000th orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope! That’s a lot of mileage!!
In commemoration of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.
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About Silver Rockets
This blog celebrates space exploration, human spaceflight and the heavens, through lots and lots ofimages.
My name is Danielle Signor, and I am a space cadet.
This is a blog, NOT A SHOP. Click the images for their source or purchase link, if available.
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