Peering into a star factory

This is a near-infrared, colour-coded composite image of a sky field in the south-western part of the galactic star-forming region Messier 17. In this image, young and heavily obscured stars are recognized by their red colour. Bluer objects are either foreground stars or well-developed massive stars whose intense light ionizes the hydrogen in this region. The diffuse light that is visible nearly everywhere in the photo is due to emission from hydrogen atoms that have (re-)combined from protons and electrons. The dark areas are due to obscuration of the light from background objects by large amounts of dust — this effect also causes many of those stars to appear quite red. A cluster of young stars in the upper-left part of the photo, so deeply embedded in the nebula that it is invisible in optical light, is well visible in this infrared image. Technical information : The exposures were made through three filtres, J (at wavelength 1.25 µm; exposure time 5 min; here rendered as blue), H (1.65 µm; 5 min; green) and Ks (2.2 µm; 5 min; red); an additional 15 min was spent on separate sky frames. The seeing was 0.5 - 0.6 arcsec. The objects in the uppermost left corner area appear somewhat elongated because of a colour-dependent aberration introduced at the edge by the large-field optics. The sky field shown measures approx. 5 x 5 arcmin 2 (corresponding to about 3% of the full moon). North is up and East is left.

Credit:

ESO

Over de afbeelding

Id:eso0030a
Type:Observatie
Publicatiedatum:14 september 2000
Gerelateerde berichten:eso0030
Grootte:3969 x 3892 px

Over het object

Naam:Horseshoe Nebula, Lobster Nebula, M 17, Messier 17, Omega Nebula, Swan Nebula
Type:Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Afstand:5500 lichtjaren
Constellation:Sagittarius
Categorie:Nebulae

Afbeeldingstypen

Grote JPEG
1,4 MB

Achtergrond

1024x768
284,6 KB
1280x1024
411,0 KB
1600x1200
520,3 KB
1920x1200
554,7 KB
2048x1536
731,9 KB

Coordinates

Position (RA):18 20 25.97
Position (Dec):-16° 10' 37.34"
Field of view:4.91 x 4.81 arcminutes
Orientation:North is 0.1° right of vertical

Kleuren & filters

BandGolflengteTelescoop
Infrarood
J
1.25 μmESO 3.6-metre telescope
SOFI
Infrarood
H
1.65 μmESO 3.6-metre telescope
SOFI
Infrarood
K
2.2 μmESO 3.6-metre telescope
SOFI