What is a nebula? It’s a cloud of gas and dust in space that eventually collapses under its own gravity to form stars—and a new survey called VISIONS has revealed some spectacular new images of these moments of star-birth.
Over a million images by the European Southern Observatory’s infrared VISTA telescope in Chile have been used to image five stellar nurseries revealing newborn stars in thick clouds of dust.
“The dust obscures these young stars from our view, making them virtually invisible to our eyes,” said Alena Rottensteiner, a PhD student at the University of Vienna and co-author of the study published this week in Astronomy & Astrophysics. “Only at infrared wavelengths can we look deep into these clouds, studying the stars in the making.”
The five star-forming regions in the constellations of Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Corona Australis and Lupus—all less than 1500 light-years away—were imaged over five years. Zoomable versions are accessible online that reach a whopping 520-million-pixel resolution.
Here are the five images, first the new infrared image from VISTA and underneath in visible light (for some) taken using optical telescopes. See the differences? The infrared telescopes sees through dust and reveals what’s behind it—exactly as the James Webb Space Telescope does a million miles from Earth.
The L1688 ‘dark nebula’ in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex (infrared)
The L1688 ‘dark nebula’ in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex (visible light)
The HH 909 A nebula in the Chamaeleon molecular cloud (infrared)
The Coronet star cluster in Corona Australis (infrared)
The Coronet star cluster in Corona Australis (visible light)
The images will help astronomers figure-out how stars are formed, which is still a big mystery. “In these images we can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the Sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before,” said Stefan Meingast, an astronomer at the University of Vienna in Austria and lead author. “This will allow us to understand the processes that transform gas and dust into stars.”