Life and Death

Hot young stars light up tendrils of gas expelled by dying stars in this view of NGC 3582, a stellar nursery in the southern constellation Carina, the keel. The nebula contains hundreds of stars, some of which will live for billions of years. The nebula is old enough, though, that its heaviest stars are already dying, so they expel their outer layers into space. The next-heaviest stars shine brightly, illuminating this material. But the nebula still contains plenty of cold, dark gas and dust to give birth to even more stars. The image was created by combining several images shot through a telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. [ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Joe DePasquale]