Sparkling colors of the nebula

The Omega Nebula, sometimes called the Swan Nebula, is a brilliant star nursery that is 5,500 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. As a star-forming region filled with gas and dust up to 15 light-years across, the nebula has recently formed a huge and hot star cluster. Strong winds and intense light from these massive 'newborn' stars have created colorful structures in this gas-filled area.

When viewed through a small telescope, the nebula is shaped like the last letter of the Greek alphabet, omega, while others observe the nebula resembling a swan with a Very long and curved neck. Other nicknames for this suggestive aerospace area include the Horseshoe and the Lobster Nebula.

Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux discovered the nebula in 1745. French comet hunter Charles Messier rediscovered the nebula independently 20 years later, and numbered it 17 give it in his list. In a small telescope, the Omega Nebula appears as a dim and mysterious light that is symmetrical with the Milky Way's star field. Previous observers were unsure whether this mysterious space was a gas cloud or a faint star cluster far away. In 1866, William Huggins solved all controversy when he confirmed that the Neubla Nebula was a glowing gas cloud, through the use of a new device, astronomical spectrophotometer.

The image combines 3 colors of the Omega Nebula (Messier 17), based on photographs taken with an EMMI device on ESO's 3.58-meter new Telescope at La Silla Observatory. North is below and east is on the right. It extended an angle equal to one-third of the full moon's diameter, about 15 light-years away. (Photo: ESO)

In recent years, astronomers have discovered that the Omega Nebula is one of the largest and youngest star-forming regions in the Milky Way galaxy. Star formation in this area began several million years ago and continues to this day. The radiant bright halo in this image is just a bulge from the location of a larger dark gas molecular cloud. Highly visible dust in the image comes from the rest of the big and hot stars who have just finished their short life and released materials back into space, with debris from which the sun the future will form.

The new photo was published, taken with an EMMI device, located on ESO's 3.58 meter (NTT) New Telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile, showing the central area of ​​the Omega Nebula with High level of detail. In 2000, another NTT device, called SOFI, captured a near-infrared image of the nebula, providing astronomers with a deeper look through the obscure dust, and showed those The star is hidden inside. NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope has also captured many small parts of this nebula in high resolution.

On the left side of the photo is a large cloud of dust and shaped like a box covering the glowing gas. The admirable fanciful color along the horizontal side of the image is the presence of different gases (mostly hydrogen, in addition to oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur) glowing under very ultraviolet light radiation. strong from young stars.