The European Southern Observatory has released a stunning image of the "Prawn Nebula" illuminated by the stars that were born there.
The giant nebula, also called Gum 56, has been creating stars for millions of years, but this still falls into the "young" range as far as nebulas go. There are currently three clusters of hot young stars that glow brightly in the presence of ultraviolet light residing in the "stellar nursery," and enough dust exists in the nebula for another entire generation of stars to be created.
"The regions of the nebula giving birth to new stars are visible in the image as dense clouds. The material forming these new stars includes the remains of the most massive stars from an older generation that have already ended their lives and ejected their material in violent supernova explosions. Thus the cycle of stellar life and death continues," the researchers said in a statement.
The radiation from these stars strips electrons from nearby atoms in a process called ionization, then recombine to release energy in the form of light. In this process, each chemical element emits light in a specific color, and clouds hydrogen in the nebula are believed to be responsible for the brilliant red color seen in the image.
Most ionization in the Prawn Nebula comes from two type-O stars, also know as blue giants. These types of stars do not have long lifespans, and will likely collapse into nebulae after only about a million years.
"Given the two very unusual blue giants in this area and the prominence of the nebula at infrared and radio wavelengths, it is perhaps surprising that this region has been comparatively little studied as yet by professional astronomers. Gum 56 has a diameter of around 250 light-years, but despite its huge size it has also often been overlooked by visual observers due to its faintness, and because most of the light it emits is at wavelengths not visible to the human eye," the researchers stated.
The nebula is about 6,000 light-years away from Earth, and was photographed with the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope using the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems program.
