Astronomers using ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) have created a stunning 80-million-pixel image of the star cluster RCW 38.
RCW 38 is a super star cluster located approximately 5,500 light-years away in the constellation of Vela.
It is the youngest (younger than one million years old) of the Milky Way’s 13 super star clusters, and the densest stellar system within 13,000 light-years of the Sun.
It contains hundreds of young, hot, massive stars and brown dwarfs.
RCW 38 is an ‘embedded’ cluster, in that the nascent cloud of dust and gas still envelops its stars.
The intense radiation pouring out from the newly-born stars causes the surrounding gas to glow brightly.
This is in stark contrast to the streams of cooler cosmic dust winding through the region.
“Compared to our Sun, which at about 4.6 billion years old is in a stable phase of its life, the stars in RCW 38 are still very young,” the ESO astronomers said in a statement.
“At less than a million years old, RCW 38 contains some 2,000 stars, creating this psychedelic landscape.”
“Star clusters are like giant pressure cookers, containing all the ingredients for star formation: dense gas clouds and opaque clumps of cosmic dust. When this mixture of gas and dust collapses under its own gravity, a star is born.”
“The strong radiation coming from these newborn stars makes the gas that encompasses the star cluster glow brightly, creating the pink hues we see here in RCW 38.”
“It’s truly a spectacular sight! Yet in visible light many stars in the RCW 38 cluster remain hidden from us, because dust blocks our view of them.”
That is where the VISTA telescope , comes in: its VIRCAM camera observes infrared light which, unlike visible light, can go through dust almost unimpeded, revealing the true riches of RCW 38.
“We also see young stars within dusty cocoons, or cold ‘failed’ stars known as brown dwarfs,” the astronomers said.
“This infrared image was taken during the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey, which has produced the most detailed infrared map of our home Galaxy ever made.”
“Surveys like this reveal as yet unknown astronomical objects, or give us a new view of known ones.”
