NGC 2467

Area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas. The image, looking like a colorful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (center) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region — the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionized gas. The bright star at the center of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

Photo credit: ESO

NGC 2467

A colorful star-forming region is featured in this stunning new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 2467. Looking like a roiling cauldron of some exotic cosmic brew, huge clouds of gas and dust are sprinkled with bright blue, hot young stars.

Strangely shaped dust clouds, resembling spilled liquids, are silhouetted against a colorful background of glowing gas. Like the familiar Orion Nebula, NGC 2467 is a huge cloud of gas - mostly hydrogen - that serves as an incubator for new stars.

This picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys through three different filters (F550M, F660N and F658N, shown in blue, green and red respectively). These filters were selected to let through different colors of red and yellow light arising from different elements in the gas. The total aggregate exposure time was about 2,000 seconds and the field of view is about 3.5 arcminutes across. These data were taken in 2004.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA and Orsola De Marco (Macquarie University)

Note: For more information on this nebula, see Hubble Snaps Sharp Image of Cosmic Concoction