Credit: ESO
The Milky Way contains many regions of starbirth
— areas where new stars are springing to life within collapsing clumps
of gas and dust. One such region, named Gum 26, is shown here as imaged
by the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Gum 26 is located roughly 20,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). It is something known as an HII region or emission nebula, where the intense ultraviolet
radiation streaming from newly-formed stars ionises the surrounding
hydrogen gas, causing it to emit a faint pinkish glow. By catching new
stars “pink-handed” in this manner, astronomers can learn more about the
conditions under which stars arise, and study how they influence their
cosmic environment.
This image was created as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme,
an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or
visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of
education and public outreach. The programme makes use of telescope time
that cannot be used for science observations. All data collected may
also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to
astronomers through ESO’s science archive.
Source: ESO/potw
