Managers chose a display of celestial fireworks in a giant cluster of stars known as Westerlund 2, located about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The cluster, comprised of about 3,000 stars, is very young by astronomical standards, just about 2 million years old.
“This spectacular image shows a cloud of dense gas and dust, the gas is collapsing forming new stars,” said NASA’s chief scientist John Grunsfeld, an astronomer and former astronaut who was part of three different Hubble repair and servicing crews.
“It’s a very vigorous breeding ground for new stars … and it contains some of the galaxy’s hottest, brightest and most massive stars that we know of,” added Hubble project scientist Jennifer Wiseman, with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
“What’s great about Hubble’s sharp resolution, is that we can differentiate star from star even in crowded regions like this cluster. This helps us scientifically to be able to understand what kinds of stars are in this cluster, how they’re different from one another, how the population may have formed in the first place. We can study the characteristics because of Hubble’s exquisite sensitivity and resolution,” Wiseman said.
The image blends visible-light and near-infrared wavelengths. In the surrounding dust clouds, red represents hydrogen and the bluish-green hues are mostly oxygen.
“This is really an exciting a week for astronomers and people who love astronomy all over the world,” Wiseman said.
Read more at Discovery News
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