For the second time this year, an image by Chalmers astronomer Jonathan Tan has been selected as the Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. The image shows the nebula RCW 7, which is located in the constellation Puppis, where stars form in large clouds of gas and dust.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust. Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into very young, developing stars, called protostars, which are still surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust.
The Hubble data in this image came from the study of a particularly massive protostellar binary named IRAS 07299-1651, still in its glowing cocoon of gas in the curling clouds toward the top of the image.
Many of the other, larger-looking stars in this image are not part of the nebula, but sit between it and our Solar System..
More info:
Read more about the image "A transformation in progress" at the ESA/Hubble official website.
The image is part of a major research project, presented in the scientific paper: Dynamics of a massive binary at birth, in Nature Astronomy
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Jonathan Tan (Chalmers University & University of Virginia), Rubén Fedriani (Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain).