The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme

STScI-PRC2007-16d

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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

[Left] — A towering "mountain" of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust is the site of new star formation in the Carina Nebula. The great gas pillar is being eroded by the ultraviolet radiation from the hottest newborn stars in the nebula.

[Right] — A close-up look at the peak of one of these "pillars of creation" reveals unequivocal evidence that stars are being born inside the columns. A pencil-like streamer of gas shoots out in both directions from the pillar and plows into surrounding gas like a fire hose hitting a wall of sand. The jet is being launched from a newly forming star hidden inside the column. A similar jet appears near the bottom of the image. These stellar jets are a common signature of the birth of a new star.

This image is from a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen. Color information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

For more information, contact:

Nathan Smith
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.,
(phone) 510-642-6931, (e-mail) nathans@astro.berkeley.edu

Nolan Walborn
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.,
(phone) 410-338-4915, (e-mail) walborn@stsci.edu

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.,
(phone) 410-338-4514), (e-mail) villard@stsci.edu

Lars Lindberg Christensen
ESA/Hubble/ST-ECF, Garching, Germany,
(phone) 49-89-320-06-306, (cell phone) 49-173-38-72-621, (e-mail) lars@eso.org

Object Names: Carina Nebula, NGC 3372

Image Type: Astronomical/Illustration

Credit for Hubble Image: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Credit for CTIO Image: N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley) and NOAO/AURA/NSF

NEWS RELEASE IMAGES

The above montage includes these images:

Star-Forming Region in the Carina Nebula: Detail 1 Image Type: Astronomical

Star-Forming Region in the Carina Nebula: Detail 2 Image Type: Astronomical

All images from this news release:

To access available information and downloadable versions of images in this news release, click on any of the images below:

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