APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
A Dust Cloud in NGC 281
Explanation: Stars themselves can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from the dense and dark molecular cloud s from which they are born. The tools the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and fast stellar winds . The heat they generate evaporates the dark molecular dust as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. Pictured above , a new open cluster of stars designated IC 1590 is nearing completion around the intricate interstellar mountain named NGC 281 . The dust cloud NGC 281, dubbed the Pacman nebula because of its overall shape , is classified as a dense Bok Globule that lies about 10,000 light years distant.
| Date | April 20, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Credit: NASA , ESA , The Hubble Heritage Team, ( STScI / AURA ) and P. McCullough ( STScI ) |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |