A visible-light image of the Sh2-54 nebula, captured by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal … [+]
A telescope on a Chilean mountain has just imaged a spectacular nebula in the night sky where stars are being born.
The glow of the Sh2-54 nebula—about 6,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens—was captured in infrared by the 67-million-pixel InfraRed CAMera on the 4.1-meter Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) based at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Found among some of the most spectacular star fields in the Milky Way, Sh2-54 was revealed by VISTA in both visible light and infrared light.
Like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), VISTA is sensitive to different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the capability of human eyes. Sensing heat radiation, not visible light, it’s able to detect some of the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Cue two spectacular images of the Sh2-54 nebula, a vast cloud of gas and dust from which stars are born.
Above (main image) is the infrared light version, with the visible light version—produced by the ESO’s Very Large Telescope—here below:
This image of the spectacular Sh2-54 nebula was taken in infrared light using ESO’s VISTA telescope … [+]
The difference between the two images is stark, with the infrared version displaying stars hidden by dust in the visible light version. That’s because visible light is easily absorbed by clouds of dust in nebulae, but infrared light can pass through the thick layers of dust almost unimpeded—and into the telescope.
Although it’s not as sensitive as JWST, VISTA exists for the same reason—to reveal as yet unseen objects in the night sky.
A great example of JWST’s ability—and reason why it exists—is its “Pillars of Creation” image, an infrared redux of a near-identical region of space imaged using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) back in the 1990s.
The portrait-shaped 123-megapixel (8,423 x 14,589 pixels) image can be downloaded as a 163.4MB “fulllsize original” image in the TIF format. There’s also a huge zoomable version to explore in a browser as well as a 1MB-size “screensize JPEG” and a bunch of wallpaper-sized images that are ideal for various desktop PCs, tablets and smartphones.
The VISTA image was taken as part of a survey of the night sky called the VISTA Variables in the Via Láctea eXtended (VVVX) survey, which repeatedly observes the Milky Way at infrared wavelengths.
This chart shows the location of the star cluster NGC 6604 in the constellation of Serpens (The … [+]
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
