Newborn Stars Blast Gas Inside a Monkey's Head

The bright young stars and glowing wisps of gas and dust in the image above are part of NGC 2174, the Monkey Head Nebula, located 6,400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. The infrared data making up the stunning image were acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument from Feb. 7-23, and released in celebration of Hubble’s 24th year in orbit.

In other words, it may be Hubble’s birthday but we all get the gift!

The fantastic shapes of the enormous cloud-like structures are the result of powerful stellar winds streaming out from the newborn stars visible along the right side of the image. Ultraviolet radiation from the stars plows into the cold banks of dust and hydrogen gas surrounding the region, causing them to glow in infrared wavelengths and carving out billowing pillars, some nearly a light-year or more in length.

Hubble had previously imaged the same area in 2001 in visible light; these new infrared observations show much more intricate details of the nebula.

The region seen here is about six light-years across and shows the “eye” of the nebula’s  profiled “monkey head.” Watch a video zooming in to the region here.

Read more at Discovery News