Stars everywhere (big pic)

[n2doc]

Stellar Powerhouses in the Eagle Nebula




A spectacular section of the well-known Eagle Nebula has been targeted by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This collection of dazzling stars is called NGC 6611, an open star cluster that formed about 5.5 million years ago and is found approximately 6500 light-years from the Earth. It is a very young cluster, containing many hot, blue stars, whose fierce ultraviolet glow make the surrounding Eagle Nebula glow brightly. The cluster and the associated nebula together are also known as Messier 16.

Astronomers refer to areas like the Eagle Nebula as HII regions. This is the scientific notation for ionised hydrogen from which the region is largely made. Extrapolating far into the future, this HII region will eventually disperse, helped along by shockwaves from supernova explosions as the more massive young stars end their brief but brilliant lives.

In this image, dark patches can also be spotted, punctuating the stellar landscape. These areas of apparent nothingness are actually very dense regions of gas and dust, which obstruct light from passing through. Many of these may be hiding the sites of the early stages of star formation, before the fledgling stars clear away their surroundings and burst into view. Dark nebulae, large and small, are dotted throughout the Universe. If you look up to the Milky Way with the naked eye from a dark, remote site, you can easily spot some huge dark nebulae blocking the background starlight.

This picture was created from images from Hubble’s Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys through the unusual combination of two near-infrared filters (F775W, coloured blue, and F850LP, coloured red). The image has also been subtly colourised using a ground-based image taken through more conventional filters. The Hubble exposure times were 2000 s in both cases and the field of view is about 3.2 arcminutes across.

Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1101a/

[CTyankee]

1. What beautiful photos! I am wondering...does anyone get a spiritual feeling from this?

It is pretty impressive and dazzling...

[formercia]

2. We will all be part of a new star some day

as Elements get recycled in the Cosmos. We are all made from Elements that were once part of a long-dead Star.

[CTyankee]

3. That is actually kind of assuring...I like it..."I know too what the blackbird knows."

[Alameda]

4. Yes!

[sharesunited]

5. And whatever we see going on there actually happened 6,500 years ago?

[TheMadMonk]

8. And it used to take a month to get your laundry done in California.

It happend 6500 years ago, and it happened just now. and on the scale of the universe there's not a whit of difference. What indeed is the "IT" here? What, if anything, is "happenning" in that image that makes duration relevant?

When you think about it we have seen vitually NOTHING "happen" in the universe. Because it takes time for light to get anywhere, almost everything we know about the Universe at large, comes in the form of a billion static snapshots which we hope we have arranged in the correct order.

The propogation of light (and ejected material) from SN1987A hitting shells of material ejected earlier in the final stages of the progenitor star's evolution is the first cosmic event which we have really observed progressing from stage to stage in real time. We have made little "movies" of swirls and eddies in objects like the Crab Nebula, and seen little bips and bops happen around quasars, but nothing much that we could call actual cosmic evolution happening before our very eyes.

It happened when it happened and we see it when we see it, mostly time is a useful convenience that helpfully prevented everything from happening at once and with the able assistance of c, allows us to take our billion static snapshots and infer from them a dynamic evolving universe.

[RagAss]

9. Relative to where it is, yes. But I'm here. And here it's happening now.

[laconicsax]

6. I'm really digging those diffraction spikes.

I go back and forth on how I feel about diffraction spikes, and I have to admit...this image just wouldn't be the same without them.

[BadgerKid]

7. Appreciate all your photo posts! n/t