The Rosette Nebula Close-up in Monoceros | European Southern Observatory

The Rosette Nebula Close-up in Monoceros | European Southern Observatory

This colorful image shows a part of the Rosette Nebula in the constellation of Monoceros (The Unicorn). It is an emission nebula, composed of clouds of gas that are made to glow by the radiation emanating from stars within. Nebulae are among the most beautiful celestial objects out there. They frequently show up spectacularly in images.

In nebulae such as this, gas and dust are combining to produce a new generation of stars. Initially, these newly-formed stars are shrouded in the dusty clouds that gave them birth, and cannot be seen in visible light. However, after a while they blow away the denser material and their powerful radiation pours out to ionize the surrounding gas, causing it to glow brightly. These elements are all present in this image—the mixture of glowing gas and dark dust has been sculpted into complex patterns on the sky by the stellar radiation, like smoke around a fire.

This particular image was obtained with the FORS 2 instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), sited in the harsh environment of Chile’s Atacama Desert. FORS 2 is an extremely versatile instrument that can produce very high-quality images (like this one!). It is also a spectrograph that can split the light it collects into a rainbow of colors, giving astronomers information about the chemical composition of objects across the Universe.

This image was created as part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Cosmic Gems program, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The program makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Release Date: Nov. 19, 2018

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