If You Loved Hubble's Images You'll Adore This 'Star Birth' Photo Taken From A Chilean Mountain
Oct 6, 2020,10:00pm EDT
Jamie Carter Senior Contributor
Science
A 50-trillion-km (33-trillion-mile, or 5 light-year) long section of the western wall in the Carina ... [+] INTERNATIONAL GEMINI OBSERVATORY/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA
It’s a new ultra-detailed image of one of the jewels of the southern hemisphere’s night sky, and it probably reminds you of something—namely the Hubble Space Telescope’s famous image of the Eagle Nebula called the “Pillars of Creation.”
The object of this new photo is the “Carina Nebula,” a region of space where stars are born a whopping 7,500 light-years away from our Solar System. It’s also a region where only space telescopes—well clear of the interference of Earth’s atmosphere—can take such images.
Or, at least, that used to be true. You see, the above image wasn’t taken by Hubble or any other orbiting space telescope, but by a team of astronomers using the Gemini South telescope atop a mountain in northern Chile.
A spectacular high-resolution zoomable version is available here and the team’s paper has just been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/10/06/if-you-loved-hubbles-images-youll-adore-this-new-laser-guided-star-nursery/#202130273083
Also postsed in Science:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122871970
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