Stellar Nursery Blooms into View
This colourful, new image taken by ESO's OmegaCAM imager on the VST reveals the spectacular nursery Sharpless 29.
A smorgasbord in the sky, Sharpless 29 serves up a broad selection of phenomena for astronomers to explore.
Massive young stars bombard the surrounding gas with ultraviolet light, causing regions of hydrogen to emit a soft red glow.
Shimmering blues are created as starlight is scattered off dust particles, and dark tendrils reveal where patches of dust blocks the visible light from the stars within.
Sharpless 29 illustrates the powerful role that hot young stars play within an interstellar cloud — sculpting, eroding and illuminating the world around them.
Transcribed by ESO, translated by —