The photograph, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, captures a
small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known
as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years away
in the constellation Sagittarius. The image is being released to
commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of Hubble’s launch on
April 24, 1990.
The wave-like patterns of gas have been sculpted and illuminated by
a torrent of ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars, which
lie outside the picture to the upper left. The glow of these patterns
accentuates the three-dimensional structure of the gases. The
ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold
hydrogen gas clouds. The warmed surfaces glow orange and red in this
photograph. The intense heat and pressure cause some material to
stream away from those surfaces, creating the glowing veil of even
hotter greenish gas that masks background structures. The pressure
on the tips of the waves may trigger new star formation within them.
The image, roughly 3 light-years across, was taken May 29-30, 1999,
with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The colors in the image
represent various gases. Red represents sulfur; green, hydrogen; and
blue, oxygen.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Hester (ASU)
Electronic images and additional information are available at:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/13
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA),
for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of
international cooperation between NASA and the European Space
Agency (ESA).
