The Hubble Space Telescope just had its 17th anniversary. For this occasion, NASA decided to take a memorable birthday photograph — in so many ways. This mosaic of 50 photographs spans a width of 50 light years. It depicts in many colored splendor the birth and imminent deaths of a family of stars, born together, and soon to be torn asunder by the tides of galactic gravitation. The early births are the titanic ones, 50 to 100 times the mass of our sun. These stars have a motto: Live Fast, Die Young, Go Out in a Blaze of Glory, and Leave a Beautiful Corpse. These super stars are the source for supernovae that briefly outshine the galaxy that gave them birth. They start to shine as the first of the tribe, consume their enormous resources at a prodigious rate, and don’t live long. During their lives, they affect the surroundings in many ways. These giant stars produce magnificent stellar winds that scour out the neighborhood, they build heavier elements in the inferno of their cores, and then they erupt, seeding their birthplace with those heavier elements so essential for life. Below is a low resolution version of this magnificent photograph that is helping scientists understand star birth and death better.
Shortly I will describe some of the areas in this fabulous mosaic in more detail along with magnified images so you can see the glory (or horror) yourself. But first let’s get a sense of the overall idea. This area was a cosmic dust bin about four million years years ago, not a regular trash pile, but the galactic equivalent of a dusty nook where all sorts of debris had collected, mostly hydrogen and helium. The probably gentle winds that blew this trash into the dusty nook we call Carina blew enough debris into this eddy that it started to slowly collect together. The force that caused this collection is gravity. As the dust and debris got denser, it heated up, slowly at first, but later faster and faster. Three million years ago it was the fourth of July, and the fireworks began.
The ignition was in the hearts of the most massive stars, for the most massive stars have the strongest gravity and are the fastest to call their collective sub-tribe (or debris) together. Once the conditions were right (enough pressure and heat), one of the most powerful of all reactions occurred — nuclear fusion. The stars lit with the fury of fusion bombs in their cores. These stars being massive shone in a an intense blue light casting heavy ultraviolet radiation about them. You can see them in the following pictures where, on the left side, the stars are hidden by gas and dust, on the right they are visible:
The hurricane-like gales these monsters produced roiled the interstellar medium, the gas and dust of their birthplace, creating new eddies where the density rose enough to start new waves of star birth. Then as the brutal winds continued, they eroded the sanctuaries where the conditions for star birth and maybe the precious cargo of planets might grow. It became a precarious race between spawning the beginning of a solar system and prematurely aborting its children and dwarfing its primary. This and more is depicted in this stunning and heartbreaking photograph. Look at the erosion of these pillars growing solar systems caused by the fantastically powerful light of the super heavy stars (above and to the left) not shown here:
In the above picture, you see how the shapes tell the tale of shifting cosmic winds. Look at the incredible turbulence in this maelstrom of growth, erosion, hope, and despair here:
And here:
With a close-up of the upper right portion of the above photo here:
This stunning display of the culmination of space and astronomical science awes me. It helps me remember to be humble, to be human, to respect my neighbor, love my friends, and remember the mortality of life. I hope you have enjoyed this ramble into astronomy. I guess I must miss the days when I taught the science. If you have any questions, please contact me via email.
These photos are small versions of the full sized image which is a 200 Mb JPEG. If you would like to download a copy for yourself, go here. Do not download the 200 Mb version unless you have Photoshop or its equivalent. The file is too large to display in a browser or with Windows Picture Viewer. My Mac is down, so I don’t know what a Mac might be able to do.
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