Telescope Reveals Tiny Stars Hidden in Nursery of Giants

Astronomers have combined hundreds of images to provide the most detailed view ever of the Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery located about 7,500 light-years from Earth.
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Astronomers have combined hundreds of images to provide the most detailed view ever of the Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery located about 7,500 light-years from Earth.

The nebula spreads across 150 light-years and shelters some of the brightest and most massive stars known.

The new view covers a patch of sky nearly the size of two full moons, and it reveals hundreds of thousands of once dust-obscured stars, some of which are 10 times less massive than the sun.

Astronomers knew these smaller and fainter stars lurked among the giants, but previous images of the nebula in visible light (right) and infrared light – a wavelength that sneaks through clouds of gas and dust from which stars form – never offered the extreme detail available in the new image (above).

Researchers have used the unprecedented view to identify all-new star clusters and confirm that star formation happens mostly on the borders of giant globules of gas and dust, rather than deep inside of them.

The results, published May 2011 in Astronomy & Astrophysics, also hint that stars tens or hundreds of times larger than the sun are the main driving force behind star formation in Carina. Such mammoth stars can explode into supernovas, spew powerful stellar winds and generate other means of compressing free-floating gas and dust into nascent stars.

To capture faint stars glowing alongside these giants, astronomers used an infrared camera called HAWK-I at Europe's Very Large Telescope, a four-telescope array situated in Chile's high-altitude Atacama Desert.

Images: ESO/T. Preibisch [high-resolution and sliding image comparison]

Video: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Digitized Sky Survey 2/T. Preibisch

Citation: "Deep wide-field near-infrared survey of the Carina Nebula." By T. Preibisch, T. Ratzka, B. Kuderna, H. Ohlendorf, R. R. King, S. Hodgkin, M. Irwin, J. R. Lewis, M. J. McCaughrean and H. Zinnecker. Astronomy & Astrophysics*, published online May 4, 2011. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201116781*