Advertisement

La Silla Observatory images newborn stars in Prawn Nebula

The rather large nebula, also known as Gum 56, is located 6,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius.

By Brooks Hays
A new generation of stars lending a glow to the Prawn Nebula. Photo by ESO
A new generation of stars lending a glow to the Prawn Nebula. Photo by ESO

GARCHING, Germany, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- As new imagery from the European Southern Observatory reveals, a new generation of star clusters is breathing life into the Prawn Nebula, illuminating the surrounding gas.

Captured by ESO's La Silla Observatory, the latest image demonstrates the process of "cosmic recycling," whereby new new stars reignite the remnants of past stars. The newly illuminated surrounding gas will eventually go on to form a successive generation of stars.

Advertisement

"The material forming these new stars includes the remains of the most massive stars from an older generation that have already ended their lives and ejected their material in violent supernova explosions," ESO scientists said in a statement. "Thus the cycle of stellar life and death continues."

As small but growing clouds of gas and dust in the Prawn Nebula become denser and coalesce, they will eventually collapse upon themselves and form the beginnings of new star systems.

Because most of the light emitted by these relatively young stars -- each cluster is just a few million years old -- is ultraviolet, the Prawn Nebula is rather faint, hardly visible to the naked eye.

The rather large nebula, also known as Gum 56, is located 6,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius. Its diameter measured 250 light-years across.

Advertisement

The radiation of the nebula's blue giants provides the surrounding gas and dust with most of its energy via ionization -- the stripping of an atom's electrons -- which causes the particles to glow. Because much of the nebula is hydrogen, Gum 56 emits a red glow.

The cycle of life inside the Prawn Nebula turns over relatively quickly. Blue giants are rather massive, and live only a few million years before they collapse and explode in a supernova that returns much of their material to the nebula.

Latest Headlines