Dark Nebula Dobashi 4173 and Reflection Nebula [B77] 63

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a variety of intriguing cosmic phenomena.

Surrounded by bright stars, towards the upper middle of the frame we see a small young stellar object (YSO) known as SSTC2D J033038.2+303212. Located in the constellation of Perseus, this star is in the early stages of its life and is still forming into a fully grown star. In this view from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) it appears to have a murky chimney of material emanating outwards and downwards, framed by bright bursts of gas flowing from the star itself. This fledgling star is actually surrounded by a bright disc of material swirling around it as it forms — a disc that we see edge-on from our perspective.

However, this small bright speck is dwarfed by its cosmic neighbor towards the bottom of the frame, a clump of bright, wispy gas swirling around as it appears to spew dark material out into space. The bright cloud is a reflection nebula known as [B77] 63, a cloud of interstellar gas that is reflecting light from the stars embedded within it. There are actually a number of bright stars within [B77] 63, most notably the emission-line star LkHA 326, and its very near neighbor LZK 18.

These stars are lighting up the surrounding gas and sculpting it into the wispy shape seen in this image. However, the most dramatic part of the image seems to be a dark stream of smoke piling outwards from [B77] 63 and its stars — a dark nebula called Dobashi 4173. Dark nebulae are incredibly dense clouds of pitch-dark material that obscure the patches of sky behind them, seemingly creating great rips and eerily empty chunks of sky. The stars speckled on top of this extreme blackness actually lie between us and Dobashi 4173.

Image credit: ESA

Molecular Cloud W48

Just as children are sorted into age groups at school, so the seeds of new stars can also be found in ‘classes’ of others of similar ages. This is especially true when the birth of stars in a cloud of gas and dust is triggered by an external event, like the explosion of a nearby supernova.

This image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory shows a sequence of star-forming regions in the molecular cloud W48, some 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle).

The blue, jellyfish-shaped cloud at the lower left is the oldest stellar nursery in the image. Young and massive stars embedded within it have shaped it into a bubble and heated the diffuse gas, making it shine at the longest wavelengths probed by Herschel.

To its right, another glowing cloud conceals clumps that will evolve into massive stars. These clumps, some of which are visible as bright blotches of light, are also lined up by their age: the older ones at the lower-left and the younger ones to the upper-right. The youngest in this sequence is the small cyan lump at the center of the image, harboring the seeds of future massive stars.

Astronomers believe that this sequence of stellar birth is the result of dozens of supernovas that exploded over 10 million years ago in a region called Aquila Supershell, beyond the left edge of this image. Compressing the surrounding material, these supernovas may have initiated a wave of star formation that sparked, one by one, these stellar cribs.

The image is a composite of the wavelengths of 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green) and 250 microns (red) and spans about one degree on the long side. North is to the upper-left and east is to the lower left. The data were acquired with Herschel’s PACS and SPIRE instruments in September 2010, as part of a larger map of the W48 molecular complex in the HOBYS Key Programme. This was first published in a paper by Q. Nguyen Luong, et al. 2011. A more detailed study of the star-forming regions shown in this image is presented in a paper by K.L.J. Rygl, et al. 2014.

Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Key Programme Consortium

Young Stellar Objects in the Serpens Cloud Core

Within the swaddling dust of the Serpens Cloud Core, astronomers are studying one of the youngest collections of stars ever seen in our galaxy. This infrared image combines data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope with shorter-wavelength observations from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), letting us peer into the clouds of dust wrapped around this stellar nursery.

At a distance of around 750 light-years, these young stars reside within the confines of the constellation Serpens, or the "Serpent." This collection contains stars of only relatively low to moderate mass, lacking any of the massive and incredibly bright stars found in larger star-forming regions like the Orion nebula. Our sun is a star of moderate mass. Whether it formed in a low-mass stellar region like Serpens, or a high-mass stellar region like Orion, is an ongoing mystery.

The stellar "hatchlings" in the Serpens Cloud Core represent the very youngest stages of stellar development. They appear as red, orange and yellow points clustered near the center of the image. Other red features include jets of material ejected from these young stars. Some mature stars that are not in the nebula appear yellowish due to dust obscuring our view at shorter, bluer wavelengths.

This region also includes a population of prenatal stars that are so deeply enshrouded in their dusty cocoons to be completely hidden in this view. They only become detectable at much longer wavelengths of light.

The inner Serpens Cloud Core is remarkably detailed in this image, as it was assembled from 82 separate snapshots totaling a whopping 16.2 hours of Spitzer observing time. Serpens is one of several star-forming regions targeted by the Young Stellar Object Variability (YSOVAR) project, which conducted repeated observations in each area to look for changes in brightness in the baby stars. Such fluctuations can provide valuable clues to how stars gobble up gas and dust as they grow and mature.

Spitzer observations at wavelengths of 3.5 and 4.6 microns are shown in green and red, respectively. 2MASS data at 1.3 microns is displayed as blue. These observations date from Spitzer's warm mission phase, following the depletion of its liquid coolant in 2009.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/2MASS

Note: For more information, see The 'Serpent' Star-forming Cloud Hatches New Stars.

Star Cluster LH63 in Emission Nebula LHA 120-N51

This stunning new Hubble image shows a small part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to our own. This collection of small baby stars, most weighing less than the Sun, form a young stellar cluster known as LH63. This cluster is still half-embedded in the cloud from which it was born, in a bright star-forming region known as the emission nebula LHA 120-N 51, or N51. This is just one of the hundreds of star-forming regions filled with young stars spread throughout the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The burning red intensity of the nebulae at the bottom of the picture illuminates wisps of gas and dark dust, each spanning many light-years. Moving up and across, bright stars become visible as sparse specks of light, giving the impression of pin-pricks in a cosmic cloak.

This patch of sky was the subject of observation by Hubble's WFPC2 camera. Looking for and at low-mass stars can help us to understand how stars behave when they are in the early stages of formation, and can give us an idea of how the Sun might have looked billions of years ago.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Gouliermis (University of Heidelberg)

Gum 41

This new image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile reveals a cloud of hydrogen and newborn stars called Gum 41. In the middle of this little-known nebula, brilliant hot young stars emit energetic radiation that causes the surrounding hydrogen to glow with a characteristic red hue.

Image credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see A Study in Scarlet.

Herbig-Haro 30

Herbig-Haro 30 is the prototype of a gas-rich "young stellar object" disk around a star. The dark disk spans 40 billion miles (64 billion kilometers) in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, cutting the bright nebula in two and blocking the central star from direct view. Volunteers can help astronomers find more disks like this through DiskDetective.org, which incorporates data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

This image was taken by Hubble's former instrument, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Photo credit: NASA/Hubble/STScI

Note: For more information, see NASA-Sponsored 'Disk Detective' Lets Public Search for New Planetary Nurseries.

Star Formation in Messier 20, the Trifid Nebula

A storm of stars is brewing in the Trifid nebula, as seen in this view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The stellar nursery, where baby stars are bursting into being, is the yellow-and-orange object dominating the picture. Yellow bars in the nebula appear to cut a cavity into three sections, hence the name Trifid nebula.

Colors in this image represent different wavelengths of infrared light detected by WISE. The main green cloud is made up of hydrogen gas. Within this cloud is the Trifid nebula, where radiation and winds from massive stars have blown a cavity into the surrounding dust and gas, and presumably triggered the birth of new generations of stars. Dust glows in infrared light, so the three lines that make up the Trifid, while appearing dark in visible-light views, are bright when seen by WISE.

The blue stars scattered around the picture are older, and they lie between Earth and the Trifid nebula. The baby stars in the Trifid will eventually look similar to those foreground stars. The red cloud at upper right is gas heated by a group of very young stars.

The Trifid nebula is located 5,400 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.

Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths, and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebula, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red, 22-micron light.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Note: For more information, see Where the Wild Stars Are.

Messier 8 - The Lagoon Nebula

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile has captured this richly detailed new image of the Lagoon Nebula. This giant cloud of gas and dust is creating intensely bright young stars, and is home to young stellar clusters. This image is a tiny part of just one of eleven public surveys of the sky now in progress using ESO telescopes. Together these are providing a vast legacy of publicly available data for the global astronomical community.

Photo credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team

Note: For more information, see Sneak Preview of Survey Telescope Treasure Trove.

Herschel's 37,000 Science Observations

This animation shows the timeline of over 37,000 scientific observations made by ESA’s Herschel space observatory throughout its entire mission, condensed into less than a minute.

The animation was prepared by Pedro Gómez-Alvarez in the Herschel Science Centre and presented by Herschel’s Project Scientist Göran Pilbratt during the opening session of The Universe Explored by Herschel symposium held at ESA’s ESTEC facility, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, last month.

The animation runs from launch, on 14 May 2009, until the infrared observatory made its last observation on 29 April 2013.

Running through the center of the graphic is the ‘ecliptic plane’ tracing the paths of the planets with respect to Herschel’s viewpoint from its orbit around L2, which is located 1.5 million kilometers behind the Earth as viewed from the Sun.

A horseshoe shape marks the Galactic Plane, the direction in which much of the Milky Way’s mass lies, and where many of Herschel’s observations were focused.

In total, Herschel observed almost a tenth of the entire sky for over 23,500 hours, providing new views into the previously hidden Universe, pointing to unseen star birth and galaxy formation, and tracing water through the Universe from molecular clouds to newborn stars and to their planet-forming discs and belts of comets.

Its two camera/imaging spectrometers, PACS (Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer) and SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver), which together covered wavelengths of 55–670 microns, provided about two thirds of Herschel’s sky coverage in parallel imaging mode. These data points are shown in yellow.

PACS and SPIRE photometry observations are indicated in blue and green, which together with spectroscopy performed with PACS, SPIRE and the third science instrument, HIFI (Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared, covering wavelength bands of 157–212 microns and 240–625 microns) make up the remainder.

Since 29 October 2013, when the last observed data went public, all of the Herschel data are available to the worldwide astronomical community. The vast data archive will become the scientific legacy of the mission, destined to yield far more discoveries than have been made over the mission lifetime so far.

Video credit: ESA & P. Gómez-Alvarez / music: B. Lynne.

IC 4628, the Prawn Nebula

The glowing jumble of gas clouds visible in new image make up a huge stellar nursery nicknamed the Prawn Nebula. Taken using the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, this may well be the sharpest picture ever taken of this object. It shows clumps of hot new-born stars nestled in among the clouds that make up the nebula.

Photo credit: ESO. Acknowledgement: Martin Pugh

Note: For more information, see Young Stars Cooking in the Prawn Nebula.

Protostar in Dark Cloud SDC 335.579-0.292

Observations of the dark cloud SDC 335.579-0.292 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter array (ALMA) have given astronomers the best view yet of a monster star in the process of forming. A stellar womb with over 500 times the mass than the Sun has been found and appears as the yellow blob near the center of this picture. This is the largest ever seen in the Milky Way — and it is still growing. The embryonic star within is hungrily feeding on the material that is racing inwards. It is expected to give birth to a very brilliant star with up to 100 times the mass of the Sun.

This image combines data from ALMA and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NRAJ/NRAO)/NASA/Spitzer/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE

Note: For more information, see ALMA Prenatal Scan Reveals Embryonic Monster Star.

NGC 1579

Unlike the venomous fictional plants that share its name, the Trifid of the North, otherwise known as the Northern Trifid or NGC 1579, poses no threat to your vision. The nebula’s moniker is inspired by the better-known Messier 20, the Trifid Nebula, which lies very much further south in the sky and displays strikingly similar swirling clouds of gas and dust.

The Trifid of the North is a large, dusty region that is currently forming new stars. These stars are very hot and therefore appear to be very blue. During their short lives they radiate strongly into the gas surrounding them, causing it to glow brightly. Many regions like the Trifid of the North — named H II regions — are clumpy and strangely shaped due to the powerful winds emanating from the stars within them. H II regions also have relatively short lives, furiously forming baby stars until the immense winds from these bodies blow the gas and dust away, leaving just stars behind.

The image above, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the bright body of the nebula, with dark dust lanes snaking across the frame. The Trifid of the North glows strongly due to the many stars within it, like young binary EM* LkHA 101. Visible to the bottom right of the image, this binary is thought to be surrounded by a hundred or so fainter and less massive stars, making up a recently formed cluster. It lies behind a cloud of dust so thick that it is almost invisible to astronomers at optical wavelengths. Infrared imaging has now penetrated this dusty veil and is uncovering the secrets of this binary star, which is about five thousand times brighter than our own Sun.

Photo credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Bruno Conti

Orion B Molecular Cloud

This image shows the Orion B molecular cloud, a vast star-forming complex in the constellation Orion, as viewed at far-infrared wavelengths with ESA's Herschel Space Observatory. At about 1300 light-years, Orion B is one of the closest regions of star formation.

This massive stellar nursery reveals itself through the glow of cosmic dust in the interstellar material that pervades it. Heated by radiation from newborn stars, the dust shines brightly at far-infrared wavelengths, revealing a tangled network of filaments.

The bright yellow, white and pink areas in the image are the densest regions, where many protostars and newborn stars are found. Darker regions correspond to colder portions of the cloud where star formation is not as active. On the right-hand side of the image, the cloud exhibits a very sharp edge where the material in Orion B is being compressed by powerful winds blowing from clusters of massive stars located beyond the field of this image. These mighty stellar winds have sculpted the iconic Horsehead Nebula, glowing brightly on the right-hand edge of the Herschel image.

Herschel's far-infrared view of Orion B also shows other pockets of star-forming gas and dust nestled in the intricate structure of this cloud: NGC 2024, also known as the Flame Nebula, and NGC 2023 on the right-hand side of the image, to the left of the Horsehead Nebula; and NGC 2071 and NGC 2068 on the left-hand side of the image.

This false-color image combines data acquired with the PACS instrument at 70 micron (shown in blue) and 160 micron (shown in green) and with the SPIRE instrument at 250 micron (shown in red).

Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/N. Schneider, Ph. André, V. Könyves (CEA Saclay, France) for the 'Gould Belt survey' Key Programme.

Note: For more information, see A Horsehead, A Flame and Hidden Gems in Orion B and Herschel’s View of the Horsehead Nebula.

Young Stellar Objects in the SMC's Wing

The tip of the "wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this new view from NASA's Great Observatories. The Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy.

The colors represent wavelengths of light across a broad spectrum. X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple; visible-light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue; and infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are also represented in red.

The spiral galaxy seen in the lower corner is actually behind this nebula. Other distant galaxies located hundreds of millions of light-years or more away can be seen sprinkled around the edge of the image.

The SMC is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans.

Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers an opportunity to study phenomena that are difficult to examine in more distant galaxies. New Chandra data of the SMC have provided one such discovery: the first detection of X-ray emission from young stars, with masses similar to our sun, outside our Milky Way galaxy.

Image credit: NASA/CXC/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Note: For more information, see A Confetti-Like Collection of Stars and NGC 602: Taken Under the "Wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Black Widow Nebula

In this Spitzer image, the two opposing bubbles are being formed in opposite directions by the powerful outflows from massive groups of forming stars. The baby stars can be seen as specks of yellow where the two bubbles overlap.

When individual stars form from molecular clouds of gas and dust they produce intense radiation and very strong particle winds. Both the radiation and the stellar winds blow the dust outward from the star creating a cavity or bubble.

In the case of the Black Widow Nebula, astronomers suspect that a large cloud of gas and dust condensed to create multiple clusters of massive star formation. The combined winds from these groups of large stars probably blew out bubbles into the direction of least resistance, forming a double bubble.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Wisconsin

Herbig-Haro 110

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of Herbig-Haro 110, a geyser of hot gas flowing from a newborn star. HH 110 appears different from most other Herbig-Haro objects: in particular, it appears on its own while they usually come in pairs. Astronomers think it may be a continuation of another object called HH 270, after it has been deflected off a dense cloud of gas.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage team (STScI/AURA)

Note: For more information, see A Geyser of Hot Gas Flowing From a Star.

NGC 6357

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has taken the most detailed image so far of a spectacular part of the stellar nursery called NGC 6357. The view shows many hot young stars, glowing clouds of gas and weird dust formations sculpted by ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds.

Photo credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see VLT Takes a Close Look at NGC 6357.

Chaos at the Heart of Orion

NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have teamed up to expose the chaos that baby stars are creating 1,500 light years away in a cosmic cloud called the Orion nebula.

This striking infrared and visible-light composite indicates that four monstrously massive stars at the center of the cloud may be the main culprits in the familiar Orion constellation. The stars are collectively called the "Trapezium." Their community can be identified as the yellow smudge near the center of the image.

Swirls of green in Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light view reveal hydrogen and sulfur gas that have been heated and ionized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the Trapezium's stars. Meanwhile, Spitzer's infrared view exposes carbon-rich molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the cloud. These organic molecules have been illuminated by the Trapezium's stars, and are shown in the composite as wisps of red and orange. On Earth, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are found on burnt toast and in automobile exhaust.

Together, the telescopes expose the stars in Orion as a rainbow of dots sprinkled throughout the image. Orange-yellow dots revealed by Spitzer are actually infant stars deeply embedded in a cocoon of dust and gas. Hubble showed less embedded stars as specks of green, and foreground stars as blue spots.

Stellar winds from clusters of newborn stars scattered throughout the cloud etched all of the well-defined ridges and cavities in Orion. The large cavity near the right of the image was most likely carved by winds from the Trapezium's stars.

Located 1,500 light-years away from Earth, the Orion nebula is the brightest spot in the sword of the Orion, or the "Hunter" constellation. The cosmic cloud is also our closest massive star-formation factory, and astronomers believe it contains more than 1,000 young stars.

The Orion constellation is a familiar sight in the fall and winter night sky in the northern hemisphere. The nebula is invisible to the unaided eye, but can be resolved with binoculars or small telescopes.

This image is a false color composite where light detected at wavelengths of 0.43, 0.50, and 0.53 microns is blue. Light at wavelengths of 0.6, 0.65, and 0.91 microns is green. Light at 3.6 microns is orange, and 8.0 microns is red.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Massive Star Formation in an Intergalactic Filament

The Herschel Space Observatory has discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament connects two clusters of galaxies that, along with a third cluster, will smash together in several billion years and give rise to one of the largest galaxy superclusters in the universe.

The three galaxy clusters of the emerging supercluster, known as RCS2319, are seen in visible and X-ray light (purple) to the left. Observations by Herschel in infrared light appear to the right, with colored regions indicating greater infrared emissions. A white circle broadly outlines the 8 million light-year-long intergalactic filament in each image.

In visible light, the filament does not stand out because dust obscures the star-formation activity in distant galaxies. Telescopes like Herschel, however, can detect the infrared glow of this dust as it is heated by newborn stars.

The amount of infrared light suggests that the galaxies in the filament are cranking out the equivalent of about 1,000 new Suns in terms of mass per year. For comparison's sake, our Milky Way galaxy is producing about one Sun's mass-worth of new stars per year.

Notably, the third galaxy cluster is off the edge of the image on the right. The reason behind this apparent snub is that the original research proposal called for making a map centered on the top cluster. During the observing run, astronomers did not know the filament existed, so its eventual discovery serves as a nice example of scientific serendipity. The team is now aiming to perform further follow-up observations to examine the filament in more detail.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/CXC/McGill University

Note: For more information, see Herschel Sees Intergalactic Bridge Aglow With Stars.

Active Black Hole Squashes Star Formation

The Herschel Space Observatory has shown that galaxies with the most powerful, active, supermassive black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes.

Supermassive black holes are believed to reside in the hearts of all large galaxies. When gas falls upon these monsters, the materials are accelerated and heated around the black hole, releasing great torrents of energy. In the process, active black holes often generate colossal jets that blast out twin streams of heated matter.

Inflows of gas into a galaxy also fuel the formation of new stars. In a new study of distant galaxies, Herschel helped show that star formation and black hole activity increase together, but only up to a point. Astronomers think that if an active black hole flares up too much, it starts spewing radiation that prevents raw material from coalescing into new stars.

This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. The bright core of the galaxy, paired with an overlaid artist's impression of jets emanating from it, indicate that the central black hole's activity is intensifying. As the active black hole continues to rev up, the rate of star formation will, in turn, be tamped down in the galaxy. Astronomers want to further study how star formation and black hole activity are intertwined.

Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: This is one of this week's big stories. For more information, see:
* Overfed Black Holes Shut Down Galactic Star-Making
* The Most Powerful Black Holes Quenched Their Galaxy's Star Formation
* Herschel Galaxy Survey: Overfed Black Holes Shut Down Galactic Star-Making