A telescope from the European Southern Observatory took a beautiful photo of two star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy, NGC 3603 and NGC 3576. The photo was taken at the La Silla Observatory, which is in the Southern Hemisphere, located in Chile. The observatory released the photo on Wednesday August 20.
These star clusters are very far from each other (about 10,000 light years), but they seemed to be about the same level of brightness in the photo.
The NGC 3603 star cluster is about 20,000 light-years away from the Earth, while the NGC 3576 cluster is about 11,000 light-years away. They can both be found in the Milky Way's Carina-Sagittarius arm.
"NGC 3603 is a very bright star cluster and is famed for having the highest concentration of massive stars that have been discovered in our galaxy so far," officials from the ESO said in a statement. "At the center lies a Wolf-Rayet multiple star system, known as HD 97950. Wolf-Rayet stars are at an advanced stage of stellar evolution, and start off with around 20 times the mass of the sun."
The NGC 3603 cluster is an area where stars are actively forming. These are some of the largest most violent cosmic bodies in the galaxy. Wolf-Rayet stars form rapidly and also burn up rapidly. These stars are incredibly large - at least 20 times larger than the Earth's sun. The photo that the ESO released this Wednesday shows clouds, HII regions, which are lit by newly-formed young stars. They are made of ultra-violet light created by the stars.
"HII regions shine because of the interaction of ultraviolet radiation given off by the brilliant hot young stars with the hydrogen gas clouds," officials from the ESO said in the statement. "HII regions can measure several hundred light-years in diameter, and the one surrounding NGC 3603 has the distinction of being the most massive in our galaxy."
The NGC 3576 nebula also is a region where stars form. Winds from the new stars there have formed gas and dust into objects that look like a pair of ram's horns, spanning a distance of 100 light-years. You can see these objects on the right side of the picture.
There are also, as pictured, a pair of Bok globules that look like dark clouds. They can be seen towards the top of the right side of the image.
"These black clouds near the top of the nebula also offer potential sites for the future formation of new stars," ESO officials said.
The new stars that may be forming are unfortunately hidden from cameras by the dark clouds.
