In this stunning picture of the giant galactic nebula NGC 3603, the
crisp resolution of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures various
stages of the life cycle of stars in one single view. To the upper left
of center is the evolved blue supergiant called Sher 25. The star has a
unique circumstellar ring of glowing gas that is a galactic twin to the
famous ring around the supernova 1987A. The grayish-bluish color of the
ring and the bipolar outflows (blobs to the upper right and lower left
of the star) indicates the presence of processed (chemically enriched)
material. Near the center of the view is a so-called starburst cluster
dominated by young, hot Wolf-Rayet stars and early O-type stars. A
torrent of ionizing radiation and fast stellar winds from these massive
stars has blown a large cavity around the cluster. The most spectacular
evidence for the interaction of ionizing radiation with cold
molecular-hydrogen cloud material are the giant gaseous pillars to the
right of the cluster. These pillars are sculptured by the same physical
processes as the famous pillars Hubble photographed in the M16 Eagle
Nebula. Dark clouds at the upper right are so-called Bok globules, which
are probably in an earlier stage of star formation. To the lower left of
the cluster are two compact, tadpole-shaped emission nebulae. Similar
structures were found by Hubble in Orion, and have been interpreted as
gas and dust evaporation from possibly protoplanetary disks (proplyds).
This true-color picture was taken on March 5, 1999 with the Wide Field
Planetary Camera 2.
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