Hubble captures stunning images of nearby galaxies where stars are actually forming
The Hubble space telescope has captured some jaw-dropping images of our young, nearby galaxies – where stars are actually forming.
Hubble captured the images in ultraviolet – a major tracer of the youngest, hottest stars, which are short lived and intensely bright.
The scan could help us understand how stars form.
‘There has never before been a star cluster and a stellar catalogue that included observations in ultraviolet light,’ said survey leader Daniela Calzetti of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
‘Ultraviolet light is a major tracer of the youngest and hottest star populations, which astronomers need to derive the ages of stars and get a complete stellar history. The synergy of the two catalogues combined offers an unprecedented potential for understanding star formation.’
Astronomers have now finished a survey called LEGUS (Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey) that captured the details of 50 local galaxies within 60 million light-years of Earth in both visible and ultraviolet light.
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Because of the proximity of the selected galaxies, Hubble was able to resolve them into their main components: stars and star clusters.
The team created a catalogue with about 8,000 young clusters and it also created a star catalogue comprising about 39 million stars that are at least five times more massive than our Sun.
