Stellar Nursery, RCW 120
Color composite image of RCW 120. It reveals how an expanding bubble of ionized gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps where new stars are then formed. The 870-micron submillimeter-wavelength data were taken with the LABOCA camera on the 12-m Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope. Here, the submillimeter emission is shown as the blue clouds surrounding the reddish glow of the ionized gas (shown with data from the SuperCosmos H-alpha survey). The image also contains data from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey (I-band shown in blue, R-band shown in red). RCW 120 is an H II emission nebula in the southern Milky Way and located some 4,300 light-years from Earth. Release date November 11, 2008.
Size: 3349px × 4200px
Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: -alpha, 2, 120, 2000s, 21st, 58, 2008, astronomical, astronomy, body, celestial, century, cloud, cosmic, deep, emission, formation, gum, heavenly, ii, interstellar, milky, nebula, nebulae, nursery, object, rcw, rcw120, region, science, sh2-3, sharpless, sky, southern, space, star, star-forming, stellar
