A new infrared image from ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile reveals a landscape of glowing clouds of gas and tendrils of dust surrounding hot young stars in a stellar nursery known as the Lobster Nebula.
The Lobster Nebula, also known as NGC 6357, as seen by ESO’s VISTA telescope (ESO / VVV Survey / D. Minniti / Ignacio Toledo)
The Lobster Nebula, also known as the War and Peace Nebula and NGC 6357, is located about 8,000 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
The region is chock full of forming stars, including massive hot stars which glow a brilliant blue-white in visible light.
This image presents a drastically different view to that seen in visible-light images as infrared radiation can penetrate much of the covering of dust that shrouds the object.
Pismis 24-1, one of the bright young stars in the Lobster Nebula, was thought to be the most massive star known – until it was found to actually be made up of at least three huge bright stars, each with a mass of under 100 times that of our Sun. It is the brightest object in the Pismis 24 star cluster, a bunch of stars that are all thought to have formed at the same time within the nebula.
ESO’s VISTA is the largest and most powerful survey telescope ever built, and is dedicated to surveying the sky in infrared light.
