Westerlund 2 Star Cluster Image Gallery | Hubble

Westerlund 2 Star Cluster Image Gallery | Hubble

Star-forming Region Gum 29

Pillars around Westerlund 2

New Stars around Westerlund 2

Image 1

Some of the heftiest stars in Westerlund 2 are carving deep cavities in material surrounding them by unleashing torrents of ultraviolet light and high speed streams of charged particles, known as stellar winds. These are etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born and are responsible for the weird and wonderful shapes of the clouds of gas and dust in this image.

Image 2

These pillars are composed of dense gas and dust are a few light-years tall and point to the central cluster. They are thought to be incubators for new stars. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, intense radiation from the most brilliant of the cluster stars is creating a successive generation of baby stars.

Image 3

These stellar foetuses have not yet ignited the hydrogen in their cores to light-up as stars. However, Hubble’s near-infrared vision allows astronomers to identify these fledglings. The brilliant blue stars seen throughout the image are mostly in the foreground.

Credit: NASA, European Space Agency, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team

Release Date: April 23, 2015

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