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The European Southern Observatory, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, has just released this new, exceptional image of the Omega nebula, a large region of ionised hydrogen (HII) in the constellation of Sagittarius.
At a distance of between 5000 and 6000 light years, this nebula is approximately 15 light years across, and with a mass of about 800 solar masses is the sight of recent star formation, as is clear from the 35 young stars it hosts.
What is special about this image, obtained with the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph (FORS) instrument on Antu (one of the 4 unit telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope) is that it has an incredible resolution, thanks to the 0.45 arcsecond seeing during the observations. The colours, especially the dominant red due to hydrogen ionised by ultraviolet light from the hot stars, and the striations in the gas and dust are clearly visible.
This image was made as part of the Cosmic Gems program, an ESO initiative aimed at producing images with both a high scientific and visual impact, primarily for public consumption. Cosmic Gems makes use of the small amounts of time during which the telescopes are not active with research projects.
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by Michele Ferrara & Marcel
Clemens |
credit:
ESO |
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