This festive image of one of the most active star-forming regions in our region of the galaxy (in the 30 Doradus Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud) combines ultraviolet, visible, and red light captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee photo
Just in case you were looking for an excuse to gaze upon some Hubble beauty, here’s a just-released “picture postcard of hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds.” It’s actually the most detailed view ever — about 100 light-years across — of the biggest stellar nursery in our part of the galaxy, a grouping of stars called R136 in the 30 Doradus Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. That’s just next door, galactically speaking.
Not only does this picture show one of the most active star-birthing regions around here, but the sparkling blue stars also are some of the most massive stars we know of. Many of them are more than 100 times more massive than our Sun, and they’ll likely explode into brilliant supernovae in a few million years.
Let it not be said that NASA never gives the public any bang for its buck! They’re offering 25 holiday cards (like this one) featuring Hubble images for free. NASA photo
Pretty as this picture postcard is, it’s just the work of nature and physics, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s (HST) Wide Field Camera 3. The blue color represents the hottest and most massive stars, the green is the glow of oxygen, and the red comes from fluorescing hydrogen. But really, it’s just fun to look at.
If you wish it were an actual postcard, perhaps realizing too late you still haven’t sent out any holiday cards, you’re in luck! HST has 25 space-themed holiday cards available for free download at
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/holiday and, it being Hubble, they’re all spectacularly pretty, too.
So feel free to send some cards, maybe post some links to other space-themed holiday stuff if you want, and let’s try to find some beauty in this otherwise frigid season.