Seeing Red

A stellar nursery known as Lambda Centauri shines brightly from a distance of about 6,500 light-years in this new image from the European Southern Observatory. The bright blue stars in the image, which are quite young, are much hotter than the Sun, so they pump out enormous amounts of ultraviolet energy. That energy causes the surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas to glow bright red. The clouds are permeated by dark lanes and blobs of dust, where new stars are being born. The energy from the young stars is eroding both the dust and gas clouds, though, which eventually will halt the process of starbirth. Lambda Centauri, also known as IC 2944, is in the constellation Centaurus, and is too far south to see from most of the United States. [ESO]