Webb Captures Top of Iconic Horsehead Nebula in Unprecedented Detail

Horsehead Nebula (NIRCam Image)
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (AIM Paris-Saclay)

Horsehead Nebula (MIRI Image)
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (AIM Paris-Saclay)

Horsehead Nebula (Euclid, Hubble and Webb images)

Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (AIM Paris-Saclay), Mahdi Zamani The Euclid Consortium, Hubble Heritage Project (STScI, AURA)

Images

---

A clumpy dome of blueish-gray clouds topped with streaky, translucent red wisps. A large, prominent star is at the top of the image.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of a zoomed-in portion of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show the top of the "horse's mane" or edge of this iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing the region’s complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.

Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of a dense region known as the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1,300 light-years away.

The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material and therefore is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.

The Horsehead Nebula is a well-known photodissociation region, or PDR. In such a region, ultraviolet (UV) light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionized gas surrounding the massive stars and the clouds in which they are born. This UV radiation strongly influences the chemistry of these regions and acts as a significant source of heat.

These regions occur where interstellar gas is dense enough to remain mostly neutral, but not dense enough to prevent the penetration of UV light from massive stars. The light emitted from such PDRs provides a unique tool to study the physical and chemical processes that drive the evolution of interstellar matter in our galaxy, and throughout the universe from the early era of vigorous star formation to the present day.

Due to its proximity and its nearly edge-on geometry, the Horsehead Nebula is an ideal target for astronomers to study the physical structures of PDRs and the molecular evolution of the gas and dust within their respective environments, and the transition regions between them. It is considered one of the best regions in the sky to study how radiation interacts with interstellar matter.

Thanks to Webb’s MIRI and NIRCam instruments, an international team of astronomers has revealed for the first time the small-scale structures of the illuminated edge of the Horsehead. As UV light evaporates the dust cloud, dust particles are swept out away from the cloud, carried with the heated gas. Webb has detected a network of thin features tracing this movement. The observations have also allowed astronomers to investigate how the dust blocks and emits light, and to better understand the multidimensional shape of the nebula.

Next, astronomers intend to study the spectroscopic data that have been obtained to gain insights into the evolution of the physical and chemical properties of the material observed across the nebula.

These observations were taken for the Webb GTO program 1192 and the results were published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

---

About This Release

Credits:

Media Contact:

Bethany Downer
ESA/Webb, Baltimore, Maryland

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Permissions: Content Use Policy

Contact Us: Direct inquiries to the News Team.

Related Links and Documents

• ESA/Webb's Release
• The science paper by A. Abergel et al.

---

Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry

Chamaeleon I Molecular Cloud (NIRCam Image)
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA
Science: Fengwu Sun (Steward Observatory), Zak Smith (The Open University), IceAge ERS Team
Image Processing: M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

Chamaeleon I Dark Cloud (NIRCam, NIRSpec, and MIRI Spectra)
Credits: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

Science: Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI), Nicolas M. Crouzet (LEI), Zak Smith (The Open University), Melissa McClure (Leiden Observatory)

Release Images

---

If you want to build a habitable planet, ices are a vital ingredient because they are the main source of several key elements — namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur (referred to here as CHONS). These elements are important ingredients in both planetary atmospheres and molecules like sugars, alcohols, and simple amino acids.

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud. In addition to simple ices like water, the team was able to identify frozen forms of a wide range of molecules, from carbonyl sulfide, ammonia, and methane, to the simplest complex organic molecule, methanol. (The researchers considered organic molecules to be complex when having six or more atoms.) This is the most comprehensive census to date of the icy ingredients available to make future generations of stars and planets, before they are heated during the formation of young stars.

“Our results provide insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the formation of ice on the interstellar dust grains that will grow into the centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form in disks,” said Melissa McClure, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, who is the principal investigator of the observing program and lead author of the paper describing this result. “These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life.”

In addition to the identified molecules, the team found evidence for molecules more complex than methanol, and, although they didn't definitively attribute these signals to specific molecules, this proves for the first time that complex molecules form in the icy depths of molecular clouds before stars are born.

“Our identification of complex organic molecules, like methanol and potentially ethanol, also suggests that the many star and planetary systems developing in this particular cloud will inherit molecules in a fairly advanced chemical state,” added Will Rocha, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory who contributed to this discovery. “This could mean that the presence of precursors to prebiotic molecules in planetary systems is a common result of star formation, rather than a unique feature of our own solar system.”

By detecting the sulfur-bearing ice carbonyl sulfide, the researchers were able to estimate the amount of sulfur embedded in icy pre-stellar dust grains for the first time. While the amount measured is larger than previously observed, it is still less than the total amount expected to be present in this cloud, based on its density. This is true for the other CHONS elements as well. A key challenge for astronomers is understanding where these elements are hiding: in ices, soot-like materials, or rocks. The amount of CHONS in each type of material determines how much of these elements end up in exoplanet atmospheres and how much in their interiors.

"The fact that we haven't seen all of the CHONS that we expect may indicate that they are locked up in more rocky or sooty materials that we cannot measure,” explained McClure. “This could allow a greater diversity in the bulk composition of terrestrial planets.

Chemical characterization of the ices was accomplished by studying how starlight from beyond the molecular cloud was absorbed by icy molecules within the cloud at specific infrared wavelengths visible to Webb. This process leaves behind chemical fingerprints known as absorption lines which can be compared with laboratory data to identify which ices are present in the molecular cloud. In this study, the team targeted ices buried in a particularly cold, dense, and difficult-to-investigate region of the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud, a region roughly 500 light-years from Earth which is currently in the process of forming dozens of young stars.

“We simply couldn't have observed these ices without Webb,” elaborated Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who was involved in this research. “The ices show up as dips against a continuum of background starlight. In regions that are this cold and dense, much of the light from the background star is blocked, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity was necessary to detect the starlight and therefore identify the ices in the molecular cloud.”

This research forms part of the Ice Age project, one of Webb's 13 Early Release Science programs. These observations are designed to showcase Webb’s observing capabilities and to allow the astronomical community to learn how to get the best from its instruments. The Ice Age team has already planned further observations, and hopes to trace out the journey of ices from their formation through to the assemblage of icy comets. “This is just the first in a series of spectral snapshots that we will obtain to see how the ices evolve from their initial synthesis to the comet-forming regions of protoplanetary disks,” concluded McClure. “This will tell us which mixture of ices — and therefore which elements — can eventually be delivered to the surfaces of terrestrial exoplanets or incorporated into the atmospheres of giant gas or ice planets.”

These results were published in the Jan. 23 issue of Nature Astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

---

About This Release

Credits: Media Contact:

Bethany Downer
European Space Agency, Paris, France

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Permissions: Content Use Policy

Contact Us: Direct inquiries to the News Team.

Related Links and Documents

• The science paper by M. McClure et al.

Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

---

Piercing the Dark Birthplaces of Massive Stars with Webb

The Snake is a serpentine-shaped, extremely filamentary cloud. In this infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope, the blue dots are stars relatively undimmed by dust, while the red dots are embedded, forming stars. Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, and S.Carey (SSC/Caltech)

More than 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, the Brick doesn’t seem to be forming any massive stars—yet. But based on its immense mass in such a small area, if it does form stars—as scientists think it should—it would be one of the most massive star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, and S.V Ramirez (NExScI/Caltech). Release images

High-mass stars, which are eight or more times the mass of our Sun, live hard and die young. They often end their short lives in violent explosions called supernova, but their births are much more of a mystery. They form in very dense, cold clouds of gas and dust, but little is known about these regions. In 2021, shortly after the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scientists plan to study three of these clouds to understand their structure.

“What we’re trying to do is look at the birthplaces of massive stars,” explained Erick Young, principal investigator of a program that will use Webb to study this phenomenon. He is an astronomer with the Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Maryland. “Determining the actual structure of the clouds is very important in trying to understand the star-formation process,” he said.

These cold clouds—which can have up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun—are so dense that they appear as big, dark blobs on the sky. While they seem devoid of stars, the clouds are actually just obscuring the light from background stars. These dark patches are so thick with dust that they even block out some wavelengths of infrared light, a type of light that is invisible to human eyes and can usually penetrate through dusty clouds. That’s why they are called “infrared-dark clouds.” However, the unprecedented sensitivity of Webb enables observations of background stars even through these very dense regions.

Birth Environments and Cookie Dough

To understand how massive stars form, you have to understand the environment in which they form. But one of the things that makes studying massive star formation so difficult is that as soon as a star turns on, it radiates intense ultraviolet light and strong and powerful winds.

“These forces destroy the birth environment that the star was created in,” explained infrared-dark-cloud expert Cara Battersby, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. “The environment you’re looking at after it formed is totally different from the environment that was conducive to its forming in the first place. And since we know that infrared-dark clouds are places where massive stars can form, if we look at their structure before stars have formed or have just started to form, we can study what environment is needed to form those massive stars.”

Battersby likens the process to baking cookies: As soon as you bake them, they’re totally different from the dough itself. If you’ve never seen dough before, you may not have a good idea of what that baking process would look like. The infrared-dark clouds are like the raw dough before you bake it. Studying these clouds is akin to getting a chance to look at the cookie dough, seeing what goes into it, and learning what its consistency is.

The Importance of Massive Stars

Understanding massive stars and their environments is important for a variety of reasons. First, in their explosive deaths, they release many elements that are essential for life. Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium—including the building blocks of life on Earth—come from inside massive stars. Massive stars have transformed a universe that was almost completely composed of hydrogen to the rich, complex environment that is able to produce planets and people.

Massive stars also produce enormous amounts of energy. As soon as they are born, they give off light, radiation and winds that can create bubbles in the interstellar medium, possibly sparking star formation in different locations. These expanding bubbles could also break up a region where new stars are forming. Finally, when a massive star dies in a spectacular explosion, it forever changes its surroundings.

The Targets 

The study will focus Webb on the following three areas:

• The Brick: One of the darkest infrared-dark clouds in our galaxy, this roughly brick-shaped cloud resides near the galaxy’s center, about 26,000 light-years from Earth. More than 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, the Brick doesn’t seem to be forming any massive stars—yet. But it has so much mass in such a small area that if it does form stars, as scientists think it should, it would be one of the most massive star clusters in our galaxy—much like the Arches and Quintuplet clusters, also in the neighborhood of the galaxy’s center.

• The Snake: With a name inspired by its serpentine shape, this extremely filamentary cloud is about 12,000 light-years away with a total mass of 100,000 Suns. Scattered along the Snake are warm, dense dust clouds, each containing about 1,000 times the mass of the Sun in gas and dust. These clouds are being heated by young, massive stars forming inside of them. The Snake may be a section of a much longer filament that is a “Bone of the Milky Way,” tracing out the galaxy’s spiral structure.

• IRDC 1822: Located about 11,000 light-years away, this cloud is also part of a “Bone of the Milky Way.” It shows active, massive star formation happening in one side of it, while the other side seems completely quiet and unperturbed. A bubble on the active side is already starting to destroy the initial filament that was there before. While the quiescent side has not started forming stars yet, it probably will soon.

The Technique

To study these clouds, Young and his team will use background stars as probes. “The more stars that you have, the more different lines of sight,” said Young. “Each one is like a little pencil beam, and by measuring the color of the star, you can assess how much dust is in that particular line of sight.”

The scientists will make maps—basically, very deep images—in four different infrared wavelengths. Each wavelength has a different ability to penetrate the cloud. “If you look at a given star and see that it’s actually a lot redder than you expect, then you can surmise that its light has actually gone through some dust, and the dust has made the color redder than the typical, unobscured star,” said Young.

By observing the difference in color based on these four different measurements in the near-infrared, and comparing that with a model of dust dimming and reddening, Young and his team can measure the dust in that particular line of sight. Webb will allow them to do that for thousands and thousands of stars that penetrate each cloud, giving them a wealth of data points. Since most stars of a given type are similar to each other in brightness and color, any marked differences that Webb can observe are mostly due to the effects of material between us and the stars.

Only with Webb

This work can only be done because of Webb’s exquisite sensitivity and excellent angular resolution. Webb’s sensitivity enables scientists to see fainter stars and a higher density of background stars. Its angular resolution, the ability to distinguish tiny details of an object, allows astronomers to discriminate between individual stars.

This science is being conducted as part of a Webb Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) program. This program is designed to reward scientists who helped develop the key hardware and software components or technical and interdisciplinary knowledge for the observatory. Young was part of the original instrument team that built Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world’s premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Contact:

Ann Jenkins / Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
410-338-4488 / 410-338-4366
jenkins@stsci.edu / cpulliam@stsci.edu


Related Links:

NASA's Webb Portal

Source:  NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

---

A Cosmic Pretzel

PR Image eso1916a

A Cosmic Pretzel

PR Image eso1916b

The mouthpiece of the Pipe Nebula

PR Image eso1916c

Barnard 59, a dark nebula in the constellation of Ophiuchus

---

Videos

PR Video eso1916a

ESOcast 208 Light: A Cosmic Pretzel (4K UHD)

PR Video eso1916b

Animation of two circumstellar disk orbiting and accreting gas and dust

---

Twin baby stars grow amongst a twisting network of gas and dust

Astronomers using ALMA have obtained an extremely high-resolution image showing two disks in which young stars are growing, fed by a complex pretzel-shaped network of filaments of gas and dust. Observing this remarkable phenomenon sheds new light on the earliest phases of the lives of stars and helps astronomers determine the conditions in which binary stars are born.

The two baby stars were found in the [BHB2007] 11 system – the youngest member of a small stellar cluster in the Barnard 59 dark nebula, which is part of the clouds of interstellar dust called the Pipe nebula. Previous observations of this binary system showed the outer structure. Now, thanks to the high resolution of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and an international team of astronomers led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany, we can see the inner structure of this object. 

“We see two compact sources that we interpret as circumstellar disks around the two young stars,” explains Felipe Alves from MPE who led the study.  A circumstellar disk is the ring of dust and gas that surrounds a young star. The star accrete matter from the ring to grow bigger. “The size of each of these disks is similar to the asteroid belt in our Solar System and the separation between them is 28 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth,” notes Alves. 

The two circumstellar disks are surrounded by a bigger disk with a total mass of about 80 Jupiter masses, which displays a complex network of dust structures distributed in spiral shapes –  the pretzel loops. “This is a really important result,” stresses Paola Caselli, managing director at MPE, head of the Centre of Astrochemical Studies and co-author of the study. “We have finally imaged the complex structure of young binary stars with their feeding filaments connecting them to the disk in which they were born. This provides important constraints for current models of star formation.”

The baby stars accrete mass from the bigger disk in two stages. The first stage is when mass is transferred to the individual circumstellar disks in beautiful twirling loops, which is what the new ALMA image showed. The data analysis also revealed that the less-massive but brighter circumstellar disk — the one in the lower part of the image — accretes more material. In the second stage, the stars accrete mass from their circumstellar disks. “We expect this two-level accretion process to drive the dynamics of the binary system during its mass accretion phase,” adds Alves. 

“While the good agreement of these observations with theory is already very promising, we will need to study more young binary systems in detail to better understand how multiple stars form.”

---

More Information

This research was presented in a paper published on 3 October 2019 in the journal Science.

The team is composed of F. O. Alves (Center for Astrochemical Studies, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany), P. Caselli (Center for Astrochemical Studies, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany), J. M. Girart (Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain and Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, Spain), D. Segura-Cox (Center for Astrochemical Studies, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany), G. A. P. Franco (Departamento de Física, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil), A. Schmiedeke (Center for Astrochemical Studies, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany) and B. Zhao (Center for Astrochemical Studies, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany).

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA. 

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 16 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. 

ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

---

Links

• Research paper
• Photos of ALMA

---

Contact 

Felipe Alves
Center for Astrochemical Studies — Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 30000 3897
Email: falves@mpe.mpg.de

Mariya Lyubenova
ESO Head of Media Relations
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6188
Email: pio@eso.org

Source: ESO/News

---

Glory From Gloom

PR Image eso1804a

Star formation region Lupus 3

PR Image eso1804b

The Lupus 3 dark cloud in the constellation of Scorpius

 

PR Image eso1804c

Wide-field view of the Lupus 3 dark cloud and associated hot young stars

---

Videos

PR Video eso1804a

ESOcast 148 Light: Clouded Star Birth (4K UHD)

PR Video eso1804b

Zooming in on the Lupus 3 star-forming region

PR Video eso1804c

Panning across the Lupus 3 star-forming region

---

A dark cloud of cosmic dust snakes across this spectacular wide field image, illuminated by the brilliant light of new stars. This dense cloud is a star-forming region called Lupus 3, where dazzlingly hot stars are born from collapsing masses of gas and dust. This image was created from images taken using the VLT Survey Telescope and the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and is the most detailed image taken so far of this region.

The Lupus 3 star forming region lies within the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion), only 600 light-years away from Earth. It is part of a larger complex called the Lupus Clouds, which takes its name from the adjacent constellation of Lupus (The Wolf). The clouds resemble smoke billowing across a background of millions of stars, but in fact these clouds are a dark nebula.

Nebulae are great swathes of gas and dust strung out between the stars, sometimes stretching out over hundreds of light-years. While many nebulae are spectacularly illuminated by the intense radiation of hot stars, dark nebulae shroud the light of the celestial objects within them. They are also known as absorption nebulae, because they are made up of cold, dense particles of dust that absorb and scatter light as it passes through the cloud.

Famous dark nebulae include the Coalsack Nebula and the Great Rift, which are large enough to be seen with the naked eye, starkly black against the brilliance of the Milky Way.

Lupus 3 has an irregular form, appearing like a misshapen snake across the sky. In this image it is a region of contrasts, with thick dark trails set against the glare of bright blue stars at the centre. Like most dark nebulae, Lupus 3 is an active star formation region, primarily composed of protostars and very young stars. Nearby disturbances can cause denser clumps of the nebula to contract under gravity, becoming hot and pressurised in the process. Eventually, a protostar is born out of the extreme conditions in the core of this collapsing cloud.

The two brilliant stars in the centre of this image underwent this very process. Early in their lives, the radiation they emitted was largely blocked by the thick veil of their host nebula, visible only to telescopes at infrared and radio wavelengths. But as they grew hotter and brighter, their intense radiation and strong stellar winds swept the surrounding areas clear of gas and dust, allowing them to emerge gloriously from their gloomy nursery to shine brightly.

Understanding nebulae is critical for understanding the processes of star formation — indeed, it is thought that the Sun formed in a star formation region very similar to Lupus 3 over four billion years ago. As one of the closest stellar nurseries, Lupus 3 has been the subject of many studies; in 2013, the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile captured a smaller picture of its dark smoke-like columns and brilliant stars (eso1303).

---

More Information

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and by Australia as a strategic partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

---

Links

• Research review paper
• Photos of the VLT Survey Telescope
• Photos of the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope

---

Contacts

Richard Hook
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org

Source: ESO/News