This image was taken by NASA’s Hubble space telescope and is known at the Extreme star birth. We have split this image into two parts due to the vast scale of it.
What is Star Birth in the Extreme?
Star Birth in the Extreme, also known as the Carina Nebula, shows the birth and death of stars in an extreme level of detail. Located 7500 Light-years away, the Carina Nebula spans at estimated 50 light years and contains a landscape of the nebula and how it is formed by the outflowing winds and ultraviolet radiation from the colossal stars that inhabit the Nebula and decimate the surrounding areas that remains from the cloud where stars were born. This is why we have chosen to split the original image into two as there is just too much to show!
If you ever feel like going on an interstellar holiday you will find the Carina Nebula located in Carina the Keel. The name of which is derived from the old southern Argus Narvis, the famous ship of Jason and the argonauts from Greek mythology.
The astonishing fireworks in the Carina Nebula region started 3 million years ago when the Nebulas first generation of new-born stars condensed and ignited amongst a huge cloud of cold hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carves an wide-ranging bubble of hot gas.
How this phenomenon is created
This spectacular image was brought together by 48 frames taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera, captured in the light of ionised hydrogen and is one of the largest panoramic images ever to be taken with the Hubble’s Camera. Both images portray an almost celestial atmosphere but this couldn’t be further from the truth, as this landscape contains at least a dozen monster stars that are estimated to be 50 to 100 times the mass of our own sun that are either newborn or on the verge of death creating a massively hostile environment.
Within this devastating scene you will find that the Red hues represent Sulphur, Green to Hydrogen and Blue to Oxygen. The large Yellow bubble with its two identifiable lobes of expelled material within Part one of Star Birth in The Extreme showcases the variable star Carinae. Eta Carinae is in its final stroke of its brief and hazardous lifespan – evidenced by the two billowing lobes of gas and dust mentioned earlier that forebode its eventual explosion as a monumental supernova.
Scattered across in both images are island clumps of dark clouds, these are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being destroyed by photoionisation. Photoisionation being the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter resulting in dissociation of that matter into electrically charged particles. The hurricane blast of stellar winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation within the cavity is now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of star formation within the Nebula. Our sun and our Solar System may also have been created inside such a cosmic crucible 4.6 billion years ago.
In looking at the Carina Nebula we are seeing the genesis of Star Making as it commonly occurs along the dense spiral arms of the galaxy.
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