Space Photo of the Week: Bright Young Stars Shine in the Lobster Nebula

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The Lobster Nebula (NGC 6357), located 8,000 light-years away in the Scorpius constellation, is a massive star-forming region filled with glowing gas and dust. Captured using the VISTA telescope in Chile, this image is part of the largest-ever infrared map of the Milky Way. Infrared technology allows astronomers to peer through dense clouds, revealing the formation of young stars hidden from optical telescopes. The nebula’s Pismis 24 star cluster contains some of the most massive stars ever observed.

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The Lobster Nebula, part of the largest infrared map of the Milky Way ever created, showcases vibrant blue, white, and orange hues from hot, young stars.

– What it is: NGC 6357, a diffuse emission nebula.
– Location: 8,000 light-years away, in the constellation Scorpius.
– Shared on: September 26, 2024.

Why it stands ouy

NGC 6357, also known as the Lobster Nebula, is a cosmic nursery where massive stars are being born. Spanning 400 light-years, this star-forming region is filled with dense dust clouds and glowing gas that obscure its inner workings from standard optical telescopes. The nebula’s dense core hides much of the stellar activity, requiring infrared cameras to peer inside.

This breathtaking image, originally taken in 2013 and now available in zoomable format, is a part of a larger project involving 200,000 individual photos compiled over 13 years, creating the most detailed infrared map of the Milky Way. The images were captured using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the European Southern Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The aim of the VVV survey was to better understand the structure of our galaxy and how it formed.

VISTA’s infrared-sensitive cameras capture light from cool objects like gas and dust that are otherwise invisible to optical telescopes, allowing astronomers to see through dense clouds and study forming stars.

Notable fact: NGC 6357 contains the open star cluster Pismis 24, home to some of the galaxy’s most massive stars. NASA once believed Pismis 24-1 to be 200-300 times the mass of the Sun, but later studies revealed it is actually two stars orbiting each other, each about 100 times the Sun’s mass.