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Friday, June 22, 2012

A garden center of stars the "nebula of war and peace”

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile has allowed a group of astronomers to find an extraordinary image of the nebula NGC 6357, a nursery of stars known as the "nebula of war and peace”
The scientific body said, this new panoramic, obtained from the ESO Observatory at Cerro Paranal has, in the Atacama Desert, shows numerous hot young stars, glowing clouds of gas and dust strange formations sculpted by ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds.
The nebula NGC 6357 is in a deep zone of the Milky Way in the constellation of Scorpio. Experts call it the "nebula of war and peace" because previous research found that the bright part of the set is shaped like a dove, while the east, in their infrared images, it resembles a skull. The new image has allowed knowing the outer parts of this nursery of stars and spotted a small cluster of young stars, only a few million years old, that have formed from gas. The view is part of the "cosmic Jewels" of ESO, an initiative to produce images of objects interesting or visually appealing using telescopes of that entity for education and outreach. ESO is an intergovernmental organization formed by 14 European countries and Brazil, and Chile operates two observatories, the Chair and Chajnantor.



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