The Cat's Paw Remastered

Cat’s Paw Nebula - NGC 6334

Credit: ESO/R. Gendler & R.M. Hannahoe

The Cat’s Paw Nebula is revisited in a combination of exposures from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and expert amateur astronomers Robert Gendler and Ryan M. Hannahoe. The distinctive shape of the nebula is revealed in reddish puffy clouds of glowing gas against a dark sky dotted with stars.

The image was made by combining existing observations from the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope of the La Silla Observatory in Chile (see ESO Photo Release eso1003) with 60 hours of exposures on a 0.4-metre telescope taken by Gendler and Hannahoe.

The resolution of the existing 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope observations was combined (by using their “luminance” or brightness) with the colour information from Gendler and Hannahoe’s observations to produce a beautiful combination of data from amateur and professional telescopes. For example, the additional colour information brings out the faint blue nebulosity in the central region, which is not seen in the original ESO image, while the ESO data contribute their finer detail. The result is an image that is much more than the sum of its parts.

The well-named Cat’s Paw Nebula (also known as NGC 6334) lies in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). Although it appears close to the centre of the Milky Way on the sky, it is relatively near to Earth, at a distance of about 5500 light-years. It is about 50 light-years across and is one of the most active star formation regions in our galaxy, containing massive, young brilliant blue stars, which have formed in the last few million years. It is host to possibly tens of thousands of stars in total, some of them visible and others still hidden in the clouds of gas and dust.

Links
Robert Gendler’s website

More about → The Cat's Paw Remastered

Radio Galaxies in the Distant Universe

A small section from a Hubble image of distant galaxies. A new paper has detected and studied infrared counterparts to all the galaxies in the main image with strong radio emission, the first time such a complete sample has been obtained. Credit: NASA/Hubble. Low Resolution Image (jpg)

For over a decade astronomers have been probing a region of the northern sky, not far from the handle of the Big Dipper, that is relatively free of bright stars and the diffuse glow of the Milky Way. The scientists want to take advantage of the clarity of the sky there to peer beyond our galaxy to study remote galaxies in the distant universe. This region, about half the angular size of the full moon, is now known to have over 50,000 galaxies.

CfA astronomers Steve Willner, Matt Ashby, and Jia-Sheng Huang and their colleagues studied the region using the SAO-led Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Surveys have detected 1122 galaxies in this region that emit strongly at radio wavelengths, a consequence of their undergoing active star formation or of hosting active supermassive black holes at their nuclei. Since the radio observations alone are unable to estimate the distances to the galaxies or unravel the precise mechanisms powering their emission, the team undertook to use infrared data to provide that information.

In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, the team reports that it has detected essentially 100% of the radio galaxies in their infrared images. This is the first sample of the deep sky that has been able to completely associate radio galaxies with infrared counterparts, and it means that the conclusions they reach will be much more reliable. The team finds that 10-15% of the galaxies, most of them within a few billion light-years of us, are undergoing bursts of star formation. Roughly another quarter of the galaxies have supermassive black holes that are actively accreting matter; this group lies at greater distances (light from the most distant ones has been traveling for over eleven billion years). The remainder of the galaxies are still of uncertain nature, but now that both radio and infrared observations are available for all of them, future follow-up studies will have a strong basis for proceeding.

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

More about → Radio Galaxies in the Distant Universe

Hubble's Panoramic View of a Turbulent Star-making Region

PR Image heic1206a
Hubble's Panoramic View of a Star-Forming Region

PR Image heic1206b
Close-up images of features in the Tarantula Nebula

PR Image heic1206c

Labelled view of the Tarantula Nebula

Video

PR Video heic1206a
Hubblecast 54: 22 years in images

Several million stars are vying for attention in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula nebula.

30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighbourhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and consists of observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope that trace the location of glowing hydrogen and oxygen.

The image is being released to celebrate Hubble’s 22nd anniversary.

The stars in this image add up to a total mass millions of times bigger than that of our Sun. The image is roughly 650 light-years across and contains some rambunctious stars, from one of the fastest rotating stars to the speediest and most massive runaway star.

The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars’ birth and evolution. Many small galaxies have more spectacular starbursts, but the Large Magellanic Cloud’s 30 Doradus is one of the only star-forming regions that astronomers can study in detail. The star-birthing frenzy in 30 Doradus may be partly fueled by its close proximity to its companion galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The image reveals the stages of star birth, from embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in dark cocoons of dust and gas to behemoths that die young in supernova explosions. 30 Doradus is a star-forming factory, churning out stars at a furious pace over millions of years. The Hubble image shows star clusters of various ages, from about 2 million to about 25 million years old.

The region’s sparkling centerpiece is a giant, young star cluster named NGC 2070, only 2 million to 3 million years old. Its stellar inhabitants number roughly 500 000. The cluster is a hotbed for young, massive stars. Its dense core, known as RMC 136, is packed with some of the heftiest stars found in the nearby Universe, weighing more than 100 times the mass of our Sun.

The massive stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light, which is etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born. The image reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, the brilliant stars also may be triggering a successive generation of offspring.

When the radiation hits dense walls of gas, it creates shocks, which may be generating a new wave of star birth.

The colours come from the glowing hot gas that dominates regions of the image. Red signifies hydrogen gas and blue, oxygen.

The image was made from 30 separate fields, 15 from each camera. Hubble made the observations in October 2011. Both cameras were making observations at the same time.
Notes

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (Sheffield), A. de Koter (Amsterdam), C. Evans (UKATC/STFC, Edinburgh), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Langer (AifA, Bonn), I. Platais (JHU) and H. Sana (Amsterdam)

Links
Images of Hubble
NASA release

Contacts

Oli Usher
Hubble/ESA
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6855
Email: ousher@eso.org

More about → Hubble's Panoramic View of a Turbulent Star-making Region

APEX Turns its Eye to Dark Clouds in Taurus

PR Image eso1209a
APEX image of a star-forming filament in Taurus

PR Image eso1209b

Millimetre-range and visible-light views of a star-forming filament in Taurus

PR Image eso1209c
Diagram showing the position of Barnard 211 and Barnard 213 in Taurus

PR Image eso1209d
Digitized Sky Survey Image of part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud

Videos

PR Video eso1209a
APEX Turns its Eye to Dark Clouds in Taurus (zoom)

PR Video eso1209b
APEX Turns its Eye to Dark Clouds in Taurus (pan)

Image Comparisons

Image Comparison eso1209ea

Mouseover comparison of a star-forming filament in Taurus
seen at millimetre-range wavelengths and in visible light

Star formation in “dark markings of the sky”

A new image from the APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) telescope in Chile shows a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long. In it, newborn stars are hidden, and dense clouds of gas are on the verge of collapsing to form yet more stars. It is one of the regions of star formation closest to us. The cosmic dust grains are so cold that observations at wavelengths of around one millimetre, such as these made with the LABOCA camera on APEX, are needed to detect their faint glow.

The Taurus Molecular Cloud, in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), lies about 450 light-years from Earth. This image shows two parts of a long, filamentary structure in this cloud, which are known as Barnard 211 and Barnard 213. Their names come from Edward Emerson Barnard’s photographic atlas of the “dark markings of the sky”, compiled in the early 20th century. In visible light, these regions appear as dark lanes, lacking in stars. Barnard correctly argued that this appearance was due to “obscuring matter in space”.

We know today that these dark markings are actually clouds of interstellar gas and dust grains. The dust grains — tiny particles similar to very fine soot and sand — absorb visible light, blocking our view of the rich star field behind the clouds. The Taurus Molecular Cloud is particularly dark at visible wavelengths, as it lacks the massive stars that illuminate the nebulae in other star-formation regions such as Orion (see for example eso1103). The dust grains themselves also emit a faint heat glow but, as they are extremely cold at around -260 degrees Celsius, their light can only be seen at wavelengths much longer than visible light, around one millimetre (see image eso1209b and the mouseover comparison eso1209ea to see how the millimetre-range view appears bright where the visible-light view appears dark and obscured).

These clouds of gas and dust are not merely an obstacle for astronomers wishing to observe the stars behind them. In fact, they are themselves the birthplaces of new stars. When the clouds collapse under their own gravity, they fragment into clumps. Within these clumps, dense cores may form, in which the hydrogen gas becomes dense and hot enough to start fusion reactions: a new star is born. The birth of the star is therefore surrounded by a cocoon of dense dust, blocking observations at visible wavelengths. This is why observations at longer wavelengths, such as the millimetre range, are essential for understanding the early stages of star formation.

The upper-right part of the filament shown here is Barnard 211, while the lower-left part is Barnard 213. The millimetre-range observations from the LABOCA camera on APEX, which reveal the heat glow of the cosmic dust grains, are shown here in orange tones, and are superimposed on a visible light image of the region, which shows the rich background of stars. The bright star above the filament is φ Tauri, while the one partially visible at the left-hand edge of the image is HD 27482. Both stars are closer to us than the filament, and are not associated with it.

Observations show that Barnard 213 has already fragmented and formed dense cores — as illustrated by the bright knots of glowing dust — and star formation has already happened. However, Barnard 211 is in an earlier stage of its evolution; the collapse and fragmentation is still taking place, and will lead to star formation in the future. This region is therefore an excellent place for astronomers to study how Barnard’s “dark markings of the sky” play a crucial part in the lifecycle of stars.

The observations were made by Alvaro Hacar (Observatorio Astronómico Nacional-IGN, Madrid, Spain) and collaborators. The LABOCA camera operates on the 12-metre APEX telescope, on the plateau of Chajnantor in the Chilean Andes, at an altitude of 5000 metres. APEX is a pathfinder for the next generation submillimetre telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which is being built and operated on the same plateau.

More information

APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and ESO, with operations of the telescope entrusted to ESO.

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links
Information about APEX
Images related to APEX

Contacts

Alvaro Hacar González
Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (OAN-IGN)
Madrid, Spain
Tel: +34 915270107 ext 326
Email: a.hacar@oan.es

Mario Tafalla
Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (OAN-IGN)
Madrid, Spain
Tel: +34 915270107 ext 337
Email: m.tafalla@oan.es

Douglas Pierce-Price
ESO ALMA/APEX Public Information Officer
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6759
Email: dpiercep@eso.org

More about → APEX Turns its Eye to Dark Clouds in Taurus

New Star Cluster W3A Images Captured by SOFIA Observatory

This mid-infrared image of the W3A star cluster in the inset was captured by the FORCAST camera on the SOFIA flying observatory in 2011. It is overlaid on a near-infrared image of the W3 star-forming region from the Spitzer space telescope. The SOFIA image scale is 150 x 100 arcseconds, and the red, green and blue colors represent 37, 20 and 7 μm. The red, green and blue colors in the background image from Spitzer represent 7.9, 4.5, 3.6 μm. (SOFIA image -- NASA / DLR / USRA / DSI / FORCAST team Spitzer image -- NASA / Caltech - JPL.). View Larger Image

PALMDALE, Calif. -- NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) researchers have captured new images of a recently born cluster of massive stars named W3A.

The cluster is seen lurking in the depths of the large gas and dust cloud from which it formed. The larger image shows the overall structure of the W3 region, lying 6,400 light years away in the direction of the constellation Perseus, as seen at near-infrared wavelengths by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The inset image composed of data obtained by SOFIA at mid-infrared wavelengths zooms in on the violent interaction zone around the massive star cluster.

The energetic radiation and strong winds from these stars will eventually shred and disperse their birth cloud, possibly triggering the formation of more stars in adjacent clouds. Astronomers using SOFIA aim to better understand the effects the largest stars in the cloud have on their smaller siblings and on the cycle of star birth.

Most stars in the Milky Way, including our sun, are thought to have formed in such violent environments. The processes involved are difficult to follow because light produced by these hot stars at visual and ultraviolet wavelengths can’t escape the surrounding clouds of interstellar material. Short-wavelength starlight absorbed by small dust grains and large molecules sets these clouds aglow at the longer infrared wavelengths observed by SOFIA, allowing astronomers to peer inside the clouds and study the internal structures and processes.

The SOFIA observations were made using the Faint Object Infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), whose principal investigator is Terry Herter of Cornell University. The data were analyzed and interpreted by the FORCAST team with Francisco Salgado and Alexander Tielens of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands plus SOFIA staff scientist James De Buizer. These data are subjects of papers presented at the 2012 winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, and papers submitted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The FORCAST camera combined with SOFIA’s large telescope allows the W3 region’s star formation to be probed at mid-infrared wavelengths with unprecedented spatial detail. The inset false color image combines radiation from fluorescing large molecules at wavelength of 7 microns, indicated as blue, and warm dust grains at 19.7 microns shown in green and 37.1 microns, represented in red.

The SOFIA observations reveal the presence of some 15 massive stars in various stages of their birth process. Toward the left of the inset image, a small bubble designated by the arrow has been cleared out of the gas and dust by the most massive star in this cluster. This bubble is surrounded by a dense shell of material shown in green in which some of the dust and all of the large molecules have been destroyed. That shell is surrounded by mostly untouched cloud material, traced by the red emission from cooler dust. Astronomers have evidence that the expansion of such bubbles around massive newly born stars acts to compress nearby material and trigger the condensation of more stars.

SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP aircraft extensively modified to carry a 17-ton reflecting telescope with an effective diameter of 2.5 meters (100 inches) to altitudes as high as 45,000 feet (14 km), above more than 99 percent of the water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere that blocks most infrared radiation from celestial sources.

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and is based and managed at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages the SOFIA science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), headquartered in Columbia, Md., and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart.

The W3A star cluster image referenced in this release is available in multiple resolutions at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html

For more information about SOFIA, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/sofia

For information about SOFIA's science mission, visit:
http://www.sofia.usra.edu
http://www.dlr.de/en/sofia

Beth Hagenauer
Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.
661-276-7960
beth.hagenauer-1@nasa.gov

Nicholas A. Veronico
SOFIA Science Center
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-4589
nveronico@sofia.usra.edu

More about → New Star Cluster W3A Images Captured by SOFIA Observatory

Stars Pop Onto the Scene in New WISE Image

This enormous section of the Milky Way galaxy is a mosaic of images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus are featured in this 1,000-square degree expanse. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA. Full image and caption

PASADENA, Calif. -- A new, large mosaic from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) showcases a vast stretch of cosmic clouds bubbling with new star birth. The region -- a 1,000-square-degree chunk of our Milky Way galaxy -- is home to numerous star-forming clouds, where massive stars have blown out bubbles in the gas and dust.

"Massive stars sweep up and destroy their natal clouds, but they continuously spark new stars to form along the way," said WISE Mission Scientist Dave Leisawitz of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Leisawitz is co-author of a new paper reporting the results in the Astrophysical Journal. "Occasionally a new, massive star forms, perpetuating the sequence of events and giving rise to the dazzling fireworks display seen in this WISE mosaic."

The new image is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/pia15256.html .

The WISE space telescope mapped the entire sky two times in infrared light, completing its survey in February of 2011. Astronomers studying how stars form took advantage of WISE's all-encompassing view by studying several star-forming clouds, or nebulae, including 10 pictured in this new view.

The observations provide new evidence for a process called triggered star formation, in which the winds and sizzling radiation from massive stars compress gas and dust, inducing a second generation of stars. The same winds and radiation carve out the cavities, or bubbles, seen throughout the image.

Finding evidence for triggered star formation has proved more difficult than some might think. Astronomers are not able to watch the stars grow and evolve like biologists watching zebras in the wild. Instead, they piece together a history of star formation by looking at distinct stages in the process. It's the equivalent of observing only baby, middle-aged and elderly zebras with crude indicators of their ages. WISE is helping to fill in these gaps by providing more and more "specimens" for study.

"Each region we looked at gave us a single snapshot of star formation in progress," said Xavier Koenig, lead author of the new study at Goddard, who presented the results today in Austin, Texas, at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. "But when we look at a whole collection of regions, we can piece together the chain of events."

After looking at several of the star-forming nebulae, Koenig and his colleagues noticed a pattern in the spatial arrangement of newborn stars. Some were found lining the blown-out cavities, a phenomenon that had been seen before, but other new stars were seen sprinkled throughout the cavity interiors. The results suggest that stars are born in a successive fashion, one after the other, starting from a core cluster of massive stars and moving steadily outward. This lends support to the triggered star formation theory, and offers new clues about the physics of the process.

The astronomers also found evidence that the bubbles seen in the star-forming clouds can spawn new bubbles. In this scenario, a massive star blasts away surrounding material, eventually triggering the birth of another star massive enough to carve out its own bubble. A few examples of what may be first- and second-generation bubbles can be seen in the new WISE image.

"I can almost hear the stars pop and crackle," said Leisawitz.

The complete WISE catalogue will be released to the public astronomy community in the spring of 2012.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages, and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. Edward Wright is the principal investigator and is at UCLA. The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-0321
NASA Headquarters, Washington
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

More about → Stars Pop Onto the Scene in New WISE Image

Herschel and Spitzer See Nearby Galaxies' Stardust

This new image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI. Full image and caption

This new image shows the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light from the Herschel Space Observatory a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI. Full image and caption - enlarge image

PASADENA, Calif. - The cold dust that builds blazing stars is revealed in new images that combine observations from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions; and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The new images map the dust in the galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two of the closest neighbors to our own Milky Way galaxy.

The new images are available at the following links: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia15254.html and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia15255.html

The Large Magellanic Cloud looks like a fiery, circular explosion in the combined Herschel-Spitzer infrared data. Ribbons of dust ripple through the galaxy, with significant fields of star formation noticeable in the center, center-left and top right (the brightest center-left region is called 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, for its appearance in visible light). The Small Magellanic Cloud has a much more irregular shape. A stream of dust extends to the left in this image, known as the galaxy's "wing," and a bar of star formation appears on the right.

The colors in these images indicate temperatures in the dust that permeate the Magellanic Clouds. Colder regions show where star formation is at its earliest stages or is shut off, while warm expanses point to new stars heating dust surrounding them. The coolest areas and objects appear in red, corresponding to infrared light taken up by Herschel's Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver at 250 microns, or millionths of a meter. Herschel's Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer fills out the mid-temperature bands, shown in green, at 100 and 160 microns. The warmest spots appear in blue, courtesy of 24- and 70-micron data from Spitzer.

"Studying these galaxies offers us the best opportunity to study star formation outside of the Milky Way," said Margaret Meixner, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md., and principal investigator for the mapping project. "Star formation affects the evolution of galaxies, so we hope understanding the story of these stars will answer questions about galactic life cycles."

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the two biggest satellite galaxies of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, though they are still considered dwarf galaxies compared to the big spiral of the Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies also contain fewer metals, or elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Such an environment is thought to slow the growth of stars. Star formation in the universe peaked around 10 billion years ago, even though galaxies contained lesser abundances of metallic dust. Previously, astronomers only had a general sense of the rate of star formation in the Magellanic Clouds, but the new images enable them to study the process in more detail.

The results were presented today at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States' astronomical community.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Herschel, visit http://www.herschel.caltech.edu, http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-0321
NASA Headquarters, Washington
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

More about → Herschel and Spitzer See Nearby Galaxies' Stardust

Before They Were Stars: New Image Shows Space Nursery

The Cygnus-X star-forming region is located 4,600 light-years from Earth and spans more than 600 light-years. It contains 10 times as much gas as the Orion Nebula - enough to make over three million Suns. This infrared photograph from the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals more than a thousand protostars in the earliest stages of forming. Light of 3.6 microns is color-coded blue: 4.5-micron light is blue-green; 8.0-micron light is green; and 24-micron light is red. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Hora (CfA). High Resolution Image (jpg) - Low Resolution Image (jpg)

Austin, TX - The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night. Most stars, likely including our sun, grew up in cosmic turmoil - as illustrated in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The image shows one of the most active and turbulent regions of star birth in our galaxy, a region called Cygnus X. The choppy cloud of gas and dust lies 4,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Cygnus X was named by radio astronomers, since it is one of the brightest radio regions in the Milky Way. (It should not be confused with the black hole Cygnus X-1.)

Cygnus X, which spans an area of the sky larger than 100 full moons, is home to thousands of massive stars, and many more stars around the size of our sun or smaller. Spitzer has captured an infrared view of the entire region, which is bubbling with star formation.

"Spitzer captured the range of activities happening in this violent cloud of stellar birth," said Joe Hora of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is the principal investigator of the research. "We see bubbles carved out from massive stars, pillars of new stars, dark filaments lined with stellar embryos and more."

The majority of stars are thought to form in huge star-forming regions like Cygnus X. Over time, the stars dissipate and migrate away from each other. It's possible that our sun was once packed tightly together with other, more massive stars in a similarly chaotic, though less extreme, region.

The turbulent star-forming clouds are marked with bubbles, or cavities, which are carved out by radiation and winds from the most massive of stars. Those massive stars tear the cloud material to shreds, terminating the formation of some stars, while triggering the birth of others.

"One of the questions we want to answer is how such a violent process can lead to both the death and birth of new stars," said Sean Carey, a team member from NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. "We still don't know exactly how stars form in such disruptive environments."

Infrared data from Spitzer is helping to answer questions like these by giving astronomers a window into the dustier parts of the complex. Infrared light travels through dust, whereas visible light is blocked. For example, embryonic stars blanketed by dust pop out in the Spitzer observations. In some cases the young stars are embedded in finger-shaped pillars of dust, which line the hollowed-out cavities and point toward the central, massive stars. In other cases, these stars can be seen lining very dark, snake-like filaments of thick dust.

Another question scientists hope to answer is how these pillars and filaments are related.

"We have evidence that the massive stars are triggering the birth of new ones in the dark filaments, in addition to the pillars, but we still have more work to do," said Hora. "The biggest results from this survey are yet to come."

Infrared light in this image has been color-coded according to wavelength. Light of 3.6 microns is blue: 4.5-micron light is blue-green; 8.0-micron light is green; and 24-micron light is red. These data were taken before the Spitzer mission ran out of its coolant in 2009, and began its "warm" mission.

This release is being issued jointly with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

For more information, contact:

David A. Aguilar
Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7462
daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu

Christine Pulliam
Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Source: HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER FOR ASTROPHYSICS

More about → Before They Were Stars: New Image Shows Space Nursery

Young star rebels against its parent cloud

PR Image heic1118a
Hubble view of star-forming region S106

PR Image heic1118b
Hubble/Subaru composite of star-forming region S 106

PR Image heic1118c
Ground-based view of the area around star-forming region S 106

Videos

PR Video heic1118a
Hubblecast 51: Star-forming region S 106

PR Video heic1118b
Animation of S 106

PR Video heic1118c
Zooming in on S 106

PR Video heic1118d
Pan over S 106

PR Video heic1118e
Artist’s impression of S 106

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 has captured this image of a giant cloud of hydrogen gas illuminated by a bright young star. The image shows how violent the end stages of the star-formation process can be, with the young object shaking up its stellar nursery.

Despite the celestial colours of this picture, there is nothing peaceful about star forming region Sh 2-106, or S106 for short. A devilish young star, named S106 IR, lies in it and ejects material at high speed, which disrupts the gas and dust around it. The star has a mass about 15 times that of the Sun and is in the final stages of its formation. It will soon quieten down by entering the main sequence, the adult stage of stellar life.

For now, S106 IR remains embedded in its parent cloud, but it is rebelling against it. The material spewing off the star not only gives the cloud its hourglass shape but also makes the hydrogen gas in it very hot and turbulent. The resulting intricate patterns are clearly visible in this Hubble image.

The young star also heats up the surrounding gas, making it reach temperatures of 10 000 degrees Celsius. The star’s radiation ionises the hydrogen lobes, making them glow. The light from this glowing gas is coloured blue in this image.

Separating these regions of glowing gas is a cooler, thick lane of dust, appearing red in the image. This dark material almost completely hides the ionising star from view, but the young object can still be seen peeking through the widest part of the dust lane.

S106 was the 106th object to be catalogued by the astronomer Stewart Sharpless in the 1950s. It is a few thousand light-years distant in the direction of Cygnus (The Swan). The cloud itself is relatively small by the standards of star-forming regions, around 2 light-years along its longest axis. This is about half the distance between the Sun and Proxima Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbour.

This composite picture was obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It results from the combination of two images taken in infrared light and one which is tuned to a specific wavelength of visible light emitted by excited hydrogen gas, known as H-alpha. This choice of wavelengths is ideal for targetting star-forming regions. The H-alpha filter isolates the light emitted from hydrogen in gas clouds while the infrared light can shine through the dust that often obscures these regions.

Notes

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Links
Images of Hubble
NASA press release

Contacts

Oli Usher
Hubble/ESA
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6855
Email: ousher@eso.org

More about → Young star rebels against its parent cloud

NASA’S SOFIA Airborne Observatory Views Star Forming Region W40

This mid-infrared image of the W40 star-forming region of the Milky Way galaxy was captured recently by the FORCAST instrument on the 100-inch telescope aboard the SOFIA flying observatory. (NASA / FORCAST image)

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – A new image from NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, provides the highest resolution mid-infrared image taken to date of the massive star formation region in our galaxy known as W40.

The W40 image was taken by the Faint Object infraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) instrument mounted in the airborne observatory – a highly modified 747SP airliner carrying a reflecting telescope with an effective diameter of 100 inches (2.5 meters). The image of W40 is a composite of data captured by the FORCAST camera at infrared wavelengths of 5.4, 24.2, and 34.8 microns, all of which are partially or completely blocked by water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere and inaccessible to observatories even on high mountain tops.

W40 is difficult to view with optical telescopes because it lies on the far side of a very dense cloud of gas and dust. Infrared observations of the region peer through the dust to reveal a bright nebula and dozens of young stars with at least six massive stars, six to 20 times the mass of the sun, forming at the center.

At least 50 percent of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy formed in massive clusters of thousands of stars similar to W40. Evidence suggests that the solar system developed in such a cluster almost 5 billion years ago. Because stars are relatively dim at the wavelengths measured by FORCAST, the observed emission in the images is due to dust surrounding the stars that is heated to a few hundred degrees.

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and is based and managed at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages the SOFIA science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), headquartered in Columbia, Md., and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart.

Beth Hagenauer
Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.
661-276-7960
beth.hagenauer-1@nasa.gov

Nicholas A. Veronico
SOFIA Science Center
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-4589
nveronico@sofia.usra.edu

For more information about SOFIA, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/sofia
SOFIA Image Gallery

For information about SOFIA's science mission, visit:
http://www.sofia.usra.edu and http://www.dlr.de/en/sofia

More about → NASA’S SOFIA Airborne Observatory Views Star Forming Region W40

Galaxy Caught Blowing Bubbles

PR Image heic1114a
Hubble image of irregular galaxy Holmberg II

PR Image heic1114b

Wide-field image of irregular galaxy Holmberg II (ground-based image)

PR Video heic1114a
Zooming in on galaxy Holmberg II

PR Video heic1114b
Panning across galaxy Holmberg II

Hubble’s famous images of galaxies typically show elegant spirals or soft-edged ellipses. But these neat forms are only representative of large galaxies. Smaller galaxies like the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II come in many shapes and types that are harder to classify. This galaxy’s indistinct shape is punctuated by huge glowing bubbles of gas, captured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The intricate glowing shells of gas in Holmberg II were created by the energetic lifecycles of many generations of stars. High-mass stars form in dense regions of gas, and later in life expel strong stellar winds that blow away the surrounding material. At the very end of their lives, they explode in as a supernova. Shock waves rip through these less dense regions blowing out and heating the gas, forming the delicate shells we see today.

Holmberg II is a patchwork of dense star-forming regions and extensive barren areas with less material, which can stretch across thousands of light-years. As a dwarf galaxy, it has neither the spiral arms typical of galaxies like the Milky Way nor the dense nucleus of an elliptical galaxy. This makes Holmberg II, gravitationally speaking, a gentle haven where fragile structures such as these bubbles can hold their shape.

While the galaxy is unremarkable in size, Holmberg II does have some intriguing features. As well as its unusual appearance — which earned it a place in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a treasure trove of weird and wonderful objects — the galaxy hosts an ultraluminous X-ray source in the middle of three gas bubbles in the top right of the image. There are competing theories as to what causes this powerful radiation — one intriguing possibility is an intermediate-mass black hole which is pulling in material from its surroundings.

This colourful image is a composite of visible and near-infrared exposures taken using the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Notes

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Contacts

Oli Usher
Hubble/ESA
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6855
Email: ousher@eso.org

More about → Galaxy Caught Blowing Bubbles

An Angry Bird in the Sky

PR Image eso1135a
The Running Chicken Nebula

PR Image eso1135b
The Running Chicken Nebula in the constellation of Centaurus

PR Video eso1135a
Zooming in on the Running Chicken Nebula

A new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope reveals the Lambda Centauri Nebula, a cloud of glowing hydrogen and newborn stars in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). The nebula, also known as IC 2944, is sometimes nicknamed the Running Chicken Nebula, from a bird-like shape some people see in its brightest region.

In the nebula, which lies around 6500 light-years from Earth, hot newborn stars that formed from clouds of hydrogen gas shine brightly with ultraviolet light. This intense radiation in turn excites the surrounding hydrogen cloud, making it glow a distinctive shade of red. This red shade is typical of star-forming regions, another famous example being the Lagoon Nebula (eso0936).

Some people see a chicken shape in pictures of this red star-forming region, giving the nebula its nickname — though there is some disagreement over exactly which part of the nebula is chicken shaped, with various bird-like features in evidence across the picture [1].

Aside from the glowing gas, another sign of star formation in IC 2944 is the series of opaque black clumps silhouetted against the red background in part of this image. These are examples of a type of object called Bok globules. They appear dark as they absorb the light from the luminous background. However, observations of these dark clouds using infrared telescopes, which are able to see through the dust that normally blocks visible light, have revealed that stars are forming within many of them.

The most prominent collection of Bok globules in this image is known as Thackeray’s Globules, after the South African astronomer who discovered them in the 1950s. Visible among a group of bright stars in the upper right part of the image, these globules feature in a famous image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (link).

While Hubble offers greater detail in its image of this small area, the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory captures a much larger panorama in its images, covering an area of sky roughly the size of the full Moon [2]. Much like a zoom lens on a camera lets a photographer choose the most appropriate field of view when taking a picture, the dramatically different viewpoints offered by different telescopes can offer complementary data to scientists studying astronomical objects which cover an extended area of the sky.

If the stars cocooned in Thackeray’s Globules are still gestating, then the stars of cluster IC 2948, embedded within the nebula, are their older siblings. Still young in stellar terms, at just a few million years old, these stars shine brightly, and their ultraviolet radiation provides much of the energy that lights up the nebula. These glowing nebulae are relatively short-lived in astronomical terms (typically a few million years), meaning that the Lambda Centauri Nebula will eventually fade away as it loses both its gas and its supply of ultraviolet radiation.

Notes

[1] Ideas for where the chicken outline lies on the picture can be submitted through the Your ESO Pictures Flickr group for a chance to win some interesting prizes.

[2] This image was produced as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme. This is a new initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The programme makes use of small amounts of observing time, combined with otherwise unused time on the telescopes’ schedules so as to minimise the impact on science observations. All data collected are also made available to astronomers through ESO’s science archive.

More information

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links

Hubble Space Telescope closeup of Thackeray’s Globules in the Running Chicken Nebula

ESO Cosmic Gems page

Contacts

Richard Hook
ESO, La Silla, Paranal, E-ELT and Survey Telescopes Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Email: rhook@eso.org

More about → An Angry Bird in the Sky

VISTA Finds 96 Star Clusters Hidden Behind Dust

PR Image eso1128a
VISTA Finds Star Clusters Galore

ESO’s infrared survey telescope digs deep into
star-forming regions in our Milky Way

Using data from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has discovered 96 new open star clusters hidden by the dust in the Milky Way. These tiny and faint objects were invisible to previous surveys, but they could not escape the sensitive infrared detectors of the world’s largest survey telescope, which can peer through the dust. This is the first time so many faint and small clusters have been found at once.

This result comes just one year after the start of the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV) [1], one of the six public surveys on the new telescope. The results will appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“This discovery highlights the potential of VISTA and the VVV survey for finding star clusters, especially those hiding in dusty star-forming regions in the Milky Way’s disc. VVV goes much deeper than other surveys,” says Jura Borissova, lead author of the study.

The majority of stars with more than half of the mass of our Sun form in groups, called open clusters. These clusters are the building blocks of galaxies and vital for the formation and evolution of galaxies such as our own. However, stellar clusters form in very dusty regions that diffuse and absorb most of the visible light that the young stars emit, making them invisible to most sky surveys, but not to the 4.1-m infrared VISTA telescope.

“In order to trace the youngest star cluster formation we concentrated our search towards known star-forming areas. In regions that looked empty in previous visible-light surveys, the sensitive VISTA infrared detectors uncovered many new objects,” adds Dante Minniti, lead scientist of the VVV survey.

By using carefully tuned computer software, the team was able to remove the foreground stars appearing in front of each cluster in order to count the genuine cluster members. Afterwards, they made visual inspections of the images to measure the cluster sizes, and for the more populous clusters they made other measurements such as distance, age, and the amount of reddening of their starlight caused by interstellar dust between them and us.

“We found that most of the clusters are very small and only have about 10–20 stars. Compared to typical open clusters, these are very faint and compact objects — the dust in front of these clusters makes them appear 10 000 to 100 million times fainter in visible light. It’s no wonder they were hidden,” explains Radostin Kurtev, another member of the team.

Since antiquity only 2500 open clusters have been found in the Milky Way, but astronomers estimate there might be as many as 30 000 still hiding behind the dust and gas. While bright and large open clusters are easily spotted, this is the first time that so many faint and small clusters have been found at once.

Furthermore, these new 96 open clusters could be only the tip of the iceberg. “We’ve just started to use more sophisticated automatic software to search for less concentrated and older clusters. I am confident that many more are coming soon,” adds Borissova.
Notes

[1] Since 2010, the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV) has been scanning the central parts of the Milky Way and the southern plane of the galactic disc in infrared light. This program was granted a total of 1929 hours of observing time over a five year period. Via Lactea is the Latin name for the Milky Way.

More information

This research is presented in a paper entitled “New Galactic Star Clusters in the VVV Survey”, to appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The team is composed of J. Borissova (Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile), C. Bonatto (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), R. Kurtev (Universidad de Valparaíso), J. R. A. Clarke (Universidad de Valparaíso), F. Peñaloza (Universidad de Valparaíso), S. E. Sale (Universidad de Valparaíso; Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile), D. Minniti (Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile), J. Alonso-García (Pontificia Universidad Católica), E. Artigau (Département de Physique and Observatoire du Mont Mégantic, Université de Montréal, Canada), R. Barbá (Universidad de La Serena, Chile), E. Bica (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), G. L. Baume (Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata, Argentina), M. Catelan (Pontificia Universidad Católica), A. N. Chenè (Universidad de Valparaíso; Universidad de Concepción, Chile), B. Dias (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), S. L. Folkes (Universidad de Valparaíso), D. Froebrich (The University of Kent, UK), D. Geisler (Universidad de Concepción), R. de Grijs (Peking University, China; Kyung Hee University, Korea), M. M. Hanson (University of Cincinnati), M. Hempel (Pontificia Universidad Católica), V. D. Ivanov (European Southern Observatory), M. S. N. Kumar (Universidade do Porto; Portugal), P. Lucas (University of Hertfordshire, UK), F. Mauro (Universidad de Concepción), C. Moni Bidin (Universidad de Concepción), M. Rejkuba (European Southern Observatory), R. K. Saito (Pontificia Universidad Católica), M. Tamura National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan), and I. Toledo (Pontificia Universidad Católica).

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links
Research paper
Photos of VISTA

Contacts

Jura Borissova
Universidad de Valparaíso
Valparaíso, Chile
Tel: +56 32 299 5550
Cell: +56 9 82454638
Email: jura.borissova@uv.cl

Richard Hook
ESO, La Silla, Paranal, E-ELT and Survey Telescopes Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Email: rhook@eso.org

More about → VISTA Finds 96 Star Clusters Hidden Behind Dust