WR23 and Interstellar Clouds in Carina
Image Credit & Copyright:
Ariel Cappelletti
Stars can be like artists.
With interstellar gas as a canvas, a massive and tumultuous
Wolf-Rayet star
has created the picturesque ruffled half-circular filaments called WR23,
on the image left.
Additionally, the winds and radiation from a small cluster of stars,
NGC 3324, have sculpted a 35
light year cavity on the upper right,
with its right side appearing as a
recognizable face in profile.
This region's popular name is the
Gabriela Mistral Nebula for the famous
Chilean poet.
Together, these interstellar
clouds lie about 8,000 light-years away in the
Great Carina Nebula,
a complex stellar neighborhood harboring numerous clouds of gas and dust rich with
imagination
inspiring
shapes.
The featured telescopic view captures these nebulae's
characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen
atoms mapped to the red, green, and blue hues of the popular
Hubble Palette.