Twisting Pillars Inside The Rosette
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Click here to return to gallery Image Specifications Exposure 45 hours |
This image shows a section of the Rosette Nebula. I have captured Evaporating Gaseous Globules (EGGs). Those spherical clumps of dust and hydrogen (EGGs) shown at the tips of my green arrows are collapsing with gravity into dense spheres which will (in the next few thousand years) generate enough heat and pressure at their cores to fuse hydrogen together and initiate fusion, giving birth to a new star. Ever y star you see in that photo started as an EGG in the same way, and by studying the nebula we can easily tell where the next new stars will be born.
The exposure time for this photo was 45 hours over two months (about 4 hours per night when conditions permit). The object is 5200 light years away, which means we are seeing it as it was 5200 years ago, those EGGs (shown at the tips of my green arrows) have probably already become stars, but we won't know for another 5200 hundred years. |
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