IC 2944

The Very Large Telescope Snaps a Stellar Nursery and Celebrates Fifteen Years of Operations.jpg
Autor/Urheber: European Southern Observatory, Lizenz: CC BY 4.0
This intriguing new view of a spectacular stellar nursery IC 2944 is being released to celebrate a milestone: 15 years of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. This image also shows a group of thick clouds of dust known as the Thackeray globules silhouetted against the pale pink glowing gas of the nebula. These globules are under fierce bombardment from the ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot young stars. They are both being eroded away and also fragmenting, rather like lumps of butter dropped onto a hot frying pan. It is likely that Thackeray’s globules will be destroyed before they can collapse and form new stars.

Running Chicken Nebula - Eso2320a.jpg
Autor/Urheber: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU, Lizenz: CC BY 4.0
Der Nebel des Laufenden Huhns

Zarte rosa Wolken heben sich von einem dunklen Hintergrund ab. Die hellste und größte Wolke ist von der Mitte nach unten links versetzt. Ein Wolkenstreifen verläuft vertikal durch die Mitte des Bildes, mit einem großen, hellen blau-weißen Fleck in der Mitte. Auf der rechten Seite des Bildes befinden sich drei kleinere Wolken. Über das Bild verteilt sind blaue, orangefarbene und weiße Punkte von unterschiedlicher Größe und Helligkeit.

Der Running Chicken (Laufendes Huhn)-Nebel besteht aus mehreren Wolken, die wir alle auf diesem riesigen Bild des VLT Survey Telescope (VST) sehen können, das am ESO-Standort Paranal betrieben wird. Dieses 1,5-Milliarden-Pixel-Bild überspannt ein Gebiet am Himmel, das etwa 25 Vollmonden entspricht. Die Wolken, die in zarten rosafarbenen Schwaden dargestellt sind, sind voller Gas und Staub, die von den jungen und heißen Sternen in ihnen beleuchtet werden.

Herkunftsnachweis:

ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

PIA13451.jpg
This infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows the Lambda Centauri nebula, a star-forming cloud in our Milky Way galaxy, also known as the Running Chicken nebula. The nebula, cataloged as IC 2944, is about 5,800 light-years from Earth and is home to a new cluster of stars born from the cloud nearly 8 million years ago. The hottest members of the cluster produce enough ultraviolet radiation and strong winds to convert the cloud into ions and excavate it. The ionized gas glows in visible light, but in infrared light we see the dust in the cloud warmed by the very same radiation. The red, glowing dust is the coolest material visible in this image and is composed of metallic dust grains. The greenish components in the image are warmer dust grains composed of smog-like materials. The large green ring-like structure near the middle of the image is some 77 light-years across and was formed when materials that created the stars in the clusters were blown back by the combined winds of the stars.

The nebula gets its common name because in some visible light images it resembles a running chicken. It is also called the Lambda Centauri nebula because it appears to surround the bright star Lambda Centauri. Lambda Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the constellation Centaurus. The brightest stars in the sky are named based on the constellation they are in. For example, the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus is Alpha Centauri, the next brightest star in that constellation is Beta Centauri, and so forth. Lambda Centauri is therefore the 11th brightest star in the constellation Centaurus. It is not so bright in infrared light, however. In this WISE image, it appears as the dimmer, lower, and bluer of two bright stars in the upper right-hand corner of the image. It is a blue giant star about 410 light-years away. So, in fact, Lambda Centauri is much closer to Earth than IC 2944 and has nothing to do with the nebula at all.

This image is a four-color composite created by all four of WISE's infrared detectors. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light observed at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is mostly light from stars. Green and red represent light observed at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust, with red indicating temperatures lower than green.

Bok globules in IC2944.jpg

Strangely glowing dark clouds float serenely in this remarkable and beautiful image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. These dense, opaque dust clouds — known as globules — are silhouetted against nearby bright stars in the busy star-forming region, IC 2944.

Astronomer A.D. Thackeray first spied the globules in IC 2944 in 1950. Globules like these have been known since Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok first drew attention to such objects in 1947.

But astronomers still know very little about their origin and nature, except that they are generally associated with areas of star formation, called HII regions due to the presence of hydrogen gas. IC 2944 is filled with gas and dust that is illuminated and heated by a loose cluster of massive stars. These stars are much hotter and much more massive than our Sun.

Caldwell Catalogue.jpg
Autor/Urheber: Roberto Mura, Lizenz: CC BY-SA 3.0
Caldwell Catalogue objects.