EMBARGOED for 9 aThe Hubble Space Telescope finds no end to the wonders it can explore. And if something has already been seen, Hubble offers a simple idea: Look again, and look more closely.
That in mind, the most detailed glimpse ever provided of a nearby star-forming region shows what Hubble scientists call "a tapestry of creation and destruction, triggering the collapse of looming gas and dust clouds and forming pillar-like structures that are incubators for nascent stars."
The grand words are supported by yet another glorious Hubble image. In this case, a panoramic view of a cloud of gas and dust known as the 30 Doradus Nebula, which is about 170,000 light-years from Earth. The image shows a region of space roughly 200 by 150 light-years across.
A light-year is the distance light travels in one year at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, or about 6 trillion miles.
The 30 Doradus Nebula is the largest object of its kind in the Local Group of galaxies, which includes Andromeda (M31), Triangulum (M33), our Milky Way, and numerous smaller systems.
At the center of the nebula is a spectacular cluster of massive stars called R136, a large blue blob left of center in the picture. The cluster contains several dozen of the most massive stars known, each about 100 times the mass of the Sun and about 10 times as hot, Hubble researchers say. These stellar behemoths all formed at the same time about 2 million years ago -- relatively recent compared to our Sun, which is more than 4 billion years old.
Ultraviolet radiation and high-speed material races out from the stars, carving out the colorful, billowing features in the surrounding nebula and causing the interstellar gases to glow.
These stellar winds push gas away from the cluster and compress the inner regions of the surrounding gas and dust clouds, as seen in pinkish material in the photograph. The intense pressure triggers the collapse of parts of the clouds, producing a new generation of star formation around the central cluster.
The new stellar nursery is about 30 to 50 light-years from R136. Most of the stars in the nursery are not visible because they are still encased in cocoons of gas and dust.
Some of the nascent stars are forming in long columns of gas and dust. Previous Hubble observations revealed that the process of "triggered" star formation often involves massive pillars of material that point toward the central cluster. Such pillars form when particularly dense clouds of gas and dust shield columns of material behind them from the blistering radiation and strong winds released by massive stars, like the stars in R136.
This protected material becomes the pillars where stars can form and grow. The Hubble telescope first spied these pillars of stellar creation when it captured close-up views of the Eagle Nebula.
The new image of 30 Doradus shows numerous pillars -- each several light-years long -- oriented toward the central cluster.
In another 2 million years, the new generation of stars will be in full bloom, scientists said. But the massive stars in R136 will have burned themselves out. And the nebula's central region will be a giant shell, devoid of gas and dust.
Still later, all of the most massive stars and gas will have disappeared from the entire region, researchers speculate. Only older, less massive stars will remain in a region cleared of other material.
The mosaic image of 30 Doradus consists of five overlapping pictures taken between January 1994 and September 2000 by Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
Several color filters were used to enhance important details in the stars and the nebula:
Blue corresponds to the hot stars. The greenish color denotes hot gas energized by the central cluster of stars. Pink depicts the glowing edges of the gas and dust clouds facing the cluster, which are being bombarded by winds and radiation. Reddish-brown represents the cooler surfaces of the clouds, which are not receiving direct radiation from the central cluster.
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