A spectacular new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
image — one of the largest ever released
of a star-forming region
- highlights N11, part of a complex network
of gas clouds and star clusters
within our neighbouring galaxy, the Large
Magellanic Cloud.
This region of energetic star formation is
one of the most active in the nearby Universe.
The Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, contains
many bright bubbles of glowing gas.
One of the largest and most spectacular has
the name LHA 120-N 11, from its listing in
a catalogue compiled by
the American astronomer and astronaut Karl
Henize in 1956, and is informally known as
N11.
Close up, the billowing pink clouds of glowing
gas make N11 resemble a puffy swirl of fairground
candy floss.
From further away, its distinctive overall
shape led some observers to nickname it the
Bean Nebula.
The dramatic and colourful features visible
in the nebula are the telltale signs of star
formation.
N11 is a well-studied region that extends
over 1000 light-years.
It is the second largest star-forming region
within the LMC and has produced some of the
most massive stars known.
It is the process of star formation that gives
N11 its distinctive look.
Three successive generations of stars, each
of which formed further away from the centre
of the nebula than the last, have created
shells of gas and dust.
These shells were blown away from the newborn
stars in the turmoil of their energetic birth
and early life, creating the ring shapes so
prominent in this image.
Beans are not the only terrestrial shapes
to be found in this spectacular high resolution
image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
In the upper left is the red bloom of the
Rose Nebula, N11A.
Its petals of gas and dust are illuminated
from within, thanks to the radiation from
the massive hot stars at its centre.
The Rose Nebula is relatively compact and
dense and is the site of the most recent burst
of star development in the region.
Other star clusters abound in N11, including
NGC 1761 at the bottom of the image,
which is a group of massive hot young stars
busily pouring intense ultraviolet radiation
out into space.
Although it is much smaller than our own galaxy,
the LMC is a very vigorous region of star
formation.
Studying these stellar nurseries helps astronomers
understand a lot more about how stars are
born and their ultimate development and lifespan.
Both the LMC and its small companion, the
Small Magellanic Cloud, are easily seen with
the unaided eye
and have always been familiar to people living
in the southern hemisphere.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope celebrates
its 17th birthday with one of the largest
panoramic images ever taken - The violent
stellar fireworks of the Carina Nebula.
In the southern sky, not far from the Southern
Cross, we find the constellation Carina, the
Keel.
Here, 8,000 light-years away, the immense
Carina Nebula is located.
Hubble's new view of the Carina Nebula shows
the process of star birth at a new level of
detail.
The bizarre landscape of the nebula is sculpted
by the action of outflowing winds
and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the
monster stars that inhabit this inferno.
In the centre of the nebula we find Eta Carinae,
which is estimated to be 100 times more massive
than our Sun.
It is in the final stages of its brief eruptive
lifespan, as shown by two billowing lobes
of gas and dust
that presage its forthcoming explosion as
a titanic supernova.
Eta Carinae was the site of a giant outburst
about 150 years ago, when it temporarily became
one of the brightest stars in the southern
sky.
The star remains one of the great mysteries
of stellar astronomy.
Looking closer at the nebula we find a number
of very interesting features.
Pillars of dust and gas reveal unequivocal
evidence that stars are being born inside
the columns.
Streamers of gas shoot out from the pillars
and plough into surrounding gas like a fire
hose hitting a wall of sand.
The jets are being launched from newly forming
stars hidden inside the columns
Everywhere we find small nuggets of cold molecular
hydrogen and dust
called Bok globules that are silhouetted against
the nebula.
Now, the edges are glowing, which indicates
that the globules are being irradiated by
the hottest stars around.
It has been hypothesized that stars may form
inside such dusty cocoons.
Orion the Hunter is one of the most striking
constellations in the sky and is a familiar
sight
to amateur and professional astronomers alike.
The Orion Nebula is faintly visible to the
naked eye as a dim glow in the hunter's sword.
This swirling cloud of gas and dust is 1500
light-years from Earth,
and has fascinated astronomers since the earliest
days of the telescope.
Appearing to the eye as a small cluster of
blue-white stars surrounded by a mysterious
mist,
the nebula's vast dusty regions have long
hidden from human eyes an enormous stellar
nursery full of young, hot stars.
The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope
for Astronomy, or VISTA, has taken
a spectacular new image that reveals some
of the nebula’s buried secrets
VISTA is the latest addition to ESO’s Paranal
Observatory in Chile and it’s the largest
survey telescope in the world, with a mirror
measuring 4.1 metres in diameter.
It’s dedicated to mapping the sky in the
infrared part of the spectrum.
By looking in the infrared instead of visible
light, VISTA is able to peer straight through
the obscuring gas and dust in the Orion Nebula.
That's because in the infrared, at about twice
the wavelength of visible light,
the dust in the nebula turns largely transparent,
giving us a clear view of the young stars
that lie within.
No other telescope has ever been able to not
only see through the dust to reveal the hidden
features
buried within the Orion Nebula, but also to
show its huge extent in amazing detail in
a single image.
At the very heart of the nebula lie the four
brilliant stars forming the Trapezium, a group
of very hot young stars
pumping out fierce ultraviolet radiation that
is clearing the surrounding region and making
the gas glow.
Observing in the infrared also allows VISTA
to reveal many other young stars in this central
region that cannot be seen in visible light.
In this dusty region of the nebula, gas jets
shot out by young stars at around 700,000
kilometres an hour,
have collided with the surrounding gas and
dust, exciting it and sculpting strange red
shapes.
Normally invisible, these curious wisps provide
important clues for astronomers as they try
to understand
how stars are born and what happens in their
early years.
Visible to the naked eye, only 1500 light-years
from Earth, the great Orion Nebula has been
known and revered since ancient times.
A popular target of Hubble, researchers have
now identified 42 new discs within it that
could be the beginnings of new planetary systems
like our own.
In the sword, just under the belt in the constellation
of Orion the Hunter, is the majestic Orion
Nebula.
The Orion Nebula is one of the best known
examples of a star-forming nebula – a swirling
cloud of gas and dust where stars begin their
journey of life.
In the early 1990s astronomers discovered
so-called proplyds in Orion using Hubble.
A proplyd is a protoplanetary disc and it
forms along with a newborn star in a spinning
mixture of gas and dust;
at the centre, you have the star forming and
around it bits of dust clump together to form
a disc.
Essentially, proplyds are thought to be young
planetary systems in the making.
One of the first targets of astronomers after
telescopes were invented in the 17th century,
the Orion Nebula was also the first nebula
ever photographed, over a hundred years ago,
by the American astronomer Henry Draper, a
pioneer in astrophotography.
His photograph, taken in 1880, represents
a milestone in the history of astronomy.
The beauty of the Orion Nebula is not its
only draw; astronomers are interested in it
because it is one of the nearest star-forming
regions to Earth
with stars that are massive enough to heat
up the surrounding gas, making it glow.
This fascinating object has been a favourite
target of Hubble‘s from very early on in
the observatory‘s lifetime.
The sharpest image ever taken of the Orion
Nebula was released in 2006.
This image from Hubble‘s Advanced Camera
for Surveys shows more than 3000 stars of
various sizes
- some of which had never before been seen
in visible light.
Looking at the frenzied mixture of gas and
swirling dust, it‘s pretty clear that a
lot is going on inside the Orion Nebula.
Within the awe-inspiring, gaseous folds of
Orion, researchers - using data from the wide-field
channel on Hubble‘s Advanced Camera for
Surveys
- have identified two different types of discs:
the ones that lie close to the brightest star
in the cluster (Theta 1 Orionis C) and those
farther away from it.
The star affects the nearby discs by heating
up the gas within them, causing them to shine
brightly.
The excited material produces many glowing
cusps, which all face the bright star and
are thus randomly oriented within the nebula.
Other interesting features enhance the looks
of these captivating objects, such as jets
of matter flowing away and shock waves.
The dramatic shock waves are formed when the
stellar wind from the nearby massive star
meets the gas in the nebula, producing interesting
shapes.
They sometimes appear like boomerangs or arrows
and, in the case of 181-825
the shockwave makes the proplyd look like
a space jellyfish.
The discs that are farther away do not receive
enough energetic radiation from the star to
set the gas ablaze:
that‘s why these discs can only be detected
as a dark silhouette against the bright background
of the nebula.
The dust in the disc simply absorbs the light
from the background.
It is in these ―silhouette discs, that astronomers
are better able to study the properties of
the dust grains
that are thought to clump together and possibly
form planets like our own.
The bright star that illuminates some of the
proplyds, allowing us to see them, is both
a blessing and a curse.
The powerful radiation that lights them up
also threatens their very existence, as the
disc material,
once heated up, is very likely to dissipate
and dissolve, destroying their potential to
become planets.
Some of the bright proplyds are doomed to
be torn apart, but others will survive and,
perhaps evolve into planetary systems.
It is relatively rare to see images of proplyds
in visible light, however, the resolution
and sensitivity of Hubble
combined with the Orion Nebula‘s proximity
to Earth, allow for an excellent view of these
fascinating objects.
Although proplyds may appear to be only humble
smudges, some of them are, in fact, the seeds
of solar systems to come.
