Images by Kris Sandburg and Peter Jacobs (07/10/04)
This new photograph shows a typical star-forming region in the outer spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy, about 7,000 light-years away.
The region is known as a nebula, and it's called NGC 7380. The picture was taken by amateur skywatchers Kris Sandburg and Peter Jacobs with the help of astronomer Adam Block, in an observing program at the Kitt Peak Observatory that helps beginners learn about astrophotography.
"This field contains many young energetic stars that make the natal gas that surround them glow an intense pink/red," Block explained.
Most of the stars that carve and light the nebula are out of the picture, to the upper left.
"Their winds and radiation sculpt clouds of gas and dust into the mountainous ridges seen here," Block said via e-mail. "The darkest parts of this image are foreground clouds of dust thick enough to extinct the light beyond them."
The bright star left of center is in a bluish bubble of gas. It might be a special sort of star, known as a Wolf-Rayet, that is beginning to blow a space bubble.
NGC 7380 was discovered in 1787 by Caroline Herschel, who worked with her brother William, an astronomer who created a catalogue of such objects. William Herschel labeled this one H VII.77.
-- Robert
Roy Britt
Credit: Kris Sandburg and Peter Jacobs/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF
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