Stunning nebula 15,000 light-years away imaged by VLT Survey Telescope

By Georgina Torbet June 29, 2023

A gorgeous new image of a distant nebula has been captured by the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s VLT Survey Telescope. It shows part of the Sh2-284 nebula, a rarely imaged but stunning cloud of dust and gas located a massive 15,000 light-years away from Earth.

This nebula is a busy region of star formation, known as a stellar nursery, where young stars are born from swirls of dust and gas. As this matter moves around it forms into small clumps, which gradually grow and gather more material until they have enough gravity to attract material to them, becoming the seed of a new star. As these bright young stars are born they illuminate the dust and gas around them, creating the glowing nebula effect.

The Sh2-284 nebula. — This spectacular picture of the Sh2-284 nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Sh2-284 is a star formation region, and at its center, there is a cluster of young stars, dubbed Dolidze 25. The radiation from this cluster is powerful enough to ionize the hydrogen gas in the nebula’s cloud. It is this ionization that produces its bright orange and red colors. ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

The newly born stars also sculpt the matter around them. “The winds from the central cluster of stars push away the gas and dust in the nebula, hollowing out its center,” ESO explains. “As the winds encounter denser pockets of material, these offer more resistance meaning that the areas around them are eroded away first. This creates several pillars that can be seen along the edges of Sh2-284 pointing at the center of the nebula, such as the one on the right-hand side of the frame. While these pillars might look small in the image, they are in fact several light-years wide and contain vast amounts of gas and dust out of which new stars form.”

The VLT Survey Telescope is a huge 2.6-meter telescope located in the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. This location, at high altitude with very little rainfall and far from major sources of light pollution, is ideal for large ground-based telescopes. The VLT Survey Telescope is located next to the Very Large Telescope, and together the pair cover a range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared. The Survey Telescope takes mostly wide-angle images and helps select specific targets which can be imaged in more detail by the VLT.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

This star shredded its companion to create a stunning double-lobed nebula

A billowing pair of nearly symmetrical loops of dust and gas mark the death throes of an ancient red-giant star, as captured by Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab. The resulting structure, said to resemble an old style of English jug, is a rarely seen bipolar reflection nebula. Evidence suggests that this object formed by the interactions between the dying red giant and a now-shredded companion star. The image was obtained by NOIRLab’s Communication, Education & Engagement team as part of the NOIRLab Legacy Imaging Program.

Nebulae are some of the most beautiful structures to be found in space: vast clouds of dust and gas that are illuminated by light from nearby stars. These regions are often busy sites of star formation, as new stars are born from clumps of dust that collect more material due to gravity. Within the category of nebulae, there are different types such as emission nebulae, where the gases are ionized by radiation and glow brightly, or supernova remnants, which are the structures left behind after massive stars come to the end of their lives and explode.

A recent image captured by NOIRLab's Gemini South telescope shows a rare type of nebula called a bipolar reflection nebula. Known as the Toby Jug Nebula for its similar shape to a traditional English jug, nebula IC 2220 is 1,200 light-years away in the constellation of Carina, or the Keel.

Space

Zoom into stunning James Webb image to see a galaxy formed 13.4 billion years ago

A section of a James Webb image showing a small part of the Extended Groth Strip, located between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations.

One of the amazing things about the James Webb Space Telescope is the level of detail it is able to capture of very distant objects -- but it can be hard to picture what that means when the distances being considered are so large. Now, a new visualization gives a feel of just how detailed the data from the telescope is, by showing how it's possible to start with a stunning view of thousands of galaxies and zoom closer and closer in until you reach just one.

CEERS: Flight to Maisie's Galaxy

Space

James Webb detects important molecule in the stunning Orion nebula

This image is NIRCam’s view of the Orion Bar region studied by the team of astronomers. Bathed in harsh ultraviolet light from the stars of the Trapezium Cluster, it is an area of intense activity, with star formation and active astrochemistry. This made it a perfect place to study the exact impact that ultraviolet radiation has on the molecular makeup of the discs of gas and dust that surround new stars. The radiation erodes the nebula’s gas and dust in a process known as photoevaporation; this creates the rich tapestry of cavities and filaments that fill the view. The radiation also ionises the molecules, causing them to emit light — not only does this create a beautiful vista, it also allows astronomers to study the molecules using the spectrum of their emitted light obtained with Webb’s MIRI and NIRSpec instruments.

The Orion Nebula is famous for its beauty, but it was also the site of a recent exciting scientific discovery. The James Webb Space Telescope has detected an important molecule in a planet-forming disk of debris within the nebula. The molecule, called methyl cation (CH3+), is a carbon compound that is important for the formation of life and has never been observed in space before.

This image is NIRCam’s view of the Orion Bar region studied by the team of astronomers. Bathed in harsh ultraviolet light from the stars of the Trapezium Cluster, it is an area of intense activity, with star formation and active astrochemistry. This made it a perfect place to study the exact impact that ultraviolet radiation has on the molecular makeup of the discs of gas and dust that surround new stars. ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), the PDRs4All ERS Team