Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. Space News

See a stunning star cluster in an enormous 80-million-pixel image

By
This is an 80-million-pixel picture of the star cluster RCW 38, located 5500 light-years away in the constellation Vela. RCW 38 is a young cluster containing about 2000 stars, and is bursting with star-forming activity.
This is an 80-million-pixel picture of the star cluster RCW 38, located 5500 light-years away in the constellation Vela. RCW 38 is a young cluster containing about 2000 stars, and is bursting with star-forming activity. ESO/VVVX survey

A stunning image of star cluster RCW 38 has been captured by a telescope in Chile, showing glorious detail of the object located 5,500 light-years away. Located in the constellation of Vela, this star cluster is bursting with dust and gas, making it fertile ground for the birth of new stars.

The cluster holds around 2,000 stars, most of which are far younger than our sun and are therefore more active. Many of the dots of color are created by these young, hot stars which give off large amounts of radiations that causes the dust around them to glow brightly.

Recommended Videos

You can find a huge version of the image here, which allows you to zoom in and see the many details captured in this remarkable data.

Related

“The picture was taken with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), operating in Chile’s Atacama Desert,” the European Southern Observatory (ESO) explains. “It shows a mixture of gas, dust and stars, creating an extravagant, yet spectacular landscape. As VISTA observes infrared light, it is able to peer through most of the dust in this region, which would block our view when observing in visible light. Behind the dust, VISTA is showing young stars within dusty cocoons and cold ‘failed’ stars known as brown dwarfs, thus revealing the secrets within these young stellar nurseries.”

As well as the infrared image, ESO also shared an image of the same cluster but captured in the visible light range, which is the same portion of the spectrum that our eyes can see. As dust is opaque in visible light, and there is a great deal of dust in this cluster, most of the details of its structure are hidden. There’s also a slider that lets you flick between the two images to compare them.

This image shows the RCW 38 stellar cluster in visible light. Dust absorbs most light at these wavelengths, hiding large areas of this cluster from us.
This image shows the RCW 38 stellar cluster in visible light. Dust absorbs most light at these wavelengths, hiding large areas of this cluster from us. ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

The infrared image was taken as part of a survey by the VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) telescope. That same telescope recently produced the most detailed infrared map to date of the Milky Way, showing some of the wonders of our own galaxy that are visible in the infrared portion of the spectrum. Space telescopes like James Webb also have instruments operating in the infrared, allowing them to peer through dust clouds and to track potentially dangerous asteroids.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Stunning images of nearby galaxies from the VLT Survey Telescope
Image of the irregular dwarf galaxy Sextans A, located at a distance of about 4 million light years from us, towards the edge of the Local Group, captured by the VST (VLT Survey Telescope), an Italian telescope managed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, Chile.

A gorgeous new set of images shows the striking sight of nearby galaxies, captured by a telescope called the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), located at the European Southern Observatory (ESO)'s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Some of these galaxies are well-known, like the famous Sextans A, which is a small dwarf galaxy with an unusual square shape that is located just 4 million light years away.

Sextans A, shown above, is just a fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy at only 5,000 light years across and has been shaped by epic supernova events as stars come to the end of their lives and explode, pushing the material of the galaxy into its odd configuration.

Read more
See the stunning sights of the Euclid telescope’s 208-gigapixel cosmic atlas
This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 150 times compared to the large mosaic. On the left of the image, Euclid captured two galaxies (called ESO 364-G035 and G036) interacting with each other, 420 million light-years from us. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us.

When the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Euclid telescope launched last year, it was promised to survey a huge chunk of the sky to help understand the mysteries of dark matter. Now, having overcome some icy challenges in its first year of operation, the ESA has released a first look at the great cosmic atlas that Euclid is building.

Built from 260 observations taken over just two weeks in March and April this year, the first chunk of the map is an enormous mosaic of 208 gigapixels. A video zooming in to areas of the mosaic shows just how detailed the images are of the Southern Sky that covers 14 million distant galaxies, plus tens of millions of stars within our own Milky Way:

Read more
See the stunning Rosette Nebula in all its glorious colors
Rosette Nebula Captured with DECam

This gorgeous image shows a fiery stunner called the Rosette Nebula that's located 5,000 light-years away from Earth. Imaged by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) instrument on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile, this cloud of dust and gas acts as a stellar nursery and houses a young star cluster at its center.

Unlike other telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which looks in the infrared wavelength, the DECam looks in the optical wavelength, so it sees similar colors to what the human eye would perceive. The colors in this image are so bright and vivid due to the starlight from the massive young stars in the cluster, which give off large amounts of ultraviolet radiation, thereby ionizing nearby hydrogen gas. The ionized gas glows brightly, giving the nebular its striking appearance.

Read more