Cat's Paw Nebula

[n2doc]

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1017/

The Cat’s Paw Nebula, NGC 6334, is a huge stellar nursery, the birthplace of hundreds of massive stars. In a magnificent new ESO image taken with the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, the glowing gas and dust clouds obscuring the view are penetrated by infrared light and some of the Cat’s hidden young stars are revealed.

Towards the heart of the Milky Way, 5500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (the Scorpion), the Cat’s Paw Nebula stretches across 50 light-years. In visible light, gas and dust are illuminated by hot young stars, creating strange reddish shapes that give the object its nickname. A recent image by ESO’s Wide Field Imager (WFI) at the La Silla Observatory (eso1003) captured this visible light view in great detail. NGC 6334 is one of the most active nurseries of massive stars in our galaxy.

VISTA, the latest addition to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert, is the world’s largest survey telescope (eso0949). It works at infrared wavelengths, seeing right through much of the dust that is such a beautiful but distracting aspect of the nebula, and revealing objects hidden from the sight of visible light telescopes. Visible light tends to be scattered and absorbed by interstellar dust, but the dust is nearly transparent to infrared light.

VISTA has a main mirror that is 4.1 metres across and it is equipped with the largest infrared camera on any telescope. It shares the spectacular viewing conditions with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), which is located on the nearby summit. With this powerful instrument at their command, astronomers were keen to see the birth pains of the big young stars in the Cat’s Paw Nebula, some nearly ten times the mass of the Sun. The view in the infrared is strikingly different from that in visible light. With the dust obscuring the view far less, they can learn much more about how these stars form and develop in their first few million years of life. VISTA’s very wide field of view allows the whole star-forming region to be imaged in one shot with much greater clarity than ever before.

edited to only show small version. Go to link to see big ones....

[Tunkamerica]

1. you might want to say : GIANT pic warning

[BrklynLiberal]

2. LOL! That is true!!!!!

[n2doc]

4. Sorry! posted the link to the fullsize by mistake

now it is large, but not ginormous...

[Inspired]

7. Can you delete this and redo it? Please!

[havocmom]

8. Really! No point in a cool pic that won't fit the screen

or the neighbor's yard

[n2doc]

11. done n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Maybe you should just include the link and forget about putting the actual pic in your post.

[Inspired]

5. No kidding!

Is there a prize for the biggest picture upload?

[n2doc]

6. sorry- see above post-it is smaller now n/t

[mike_c]

9. my god, it's full of stars....

Really really full.

[sarge43]

13. Billions and billions n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

10. It certainly is breathtaking.....awesome and any other adjective of that ilk.

[fishwax]

12. wow

awesome :wow:

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. It is images like this than help me calm down after

a day of reading about world going crazy.