Prawn Nebula births astonishing new star clusters

ESO officials call it 'cosmic recylcling'

European Southern Observatory (ESO) scientists captured three clusters of newborn stars in the Prawn Nebula with the MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile as part of ESO's Cosmic Gems program.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (Catholic Online) - The scientists call the phenomenon "Cosmic Recycling." In a statement released from the team, they explained "The material forming these new stars includes the remains f the most massive stars from an older generation that have already ended their lives and ejected their material in violent supernova explosions. Thus the cycle of stellar life and death continues."

The stars can be seen shining in ultraviolet light, illuminating the nebula's gas clouds. 

The image only caught part of the 250-light-years-across nebula, which is so faint that the naked eye is usually unable to see it.

ESO officials released the statement, "This image, which only captures a part of the nebula, was taken with the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope using the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems program. The program makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects."

Eventually the dust and gas within the Prawn Nebula will become dense enough to collapse into the beginnings of a new star.

The Prawn Nebula is a nickname for Gum 56, which was originally named after Australian astronomer Colin Stanley Gum, who published a catalog of H II regions including Gum 56. The nebula can be found in the Scorpius constellation roughly 6,000 light-years from Earth.

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