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Credit & Copyright: Chuck Ayoub
Explanation:
What's inside this cosmic cave?
A stellar nursery 10 light-years deep.
The
featured skyscape is dominated by dusty
Sh2-155,
the Cave Nebula.
In the telescopic image, data taken through a
narrowband filters tracks the nebular glow of
hydrogen,
oxygen, and
sulfur,
colors that together form the
Hubble Palette.
About 2,400
light-years away, the scene lies along the plane of our
Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation
of Cepheus.
Astronomical explorations of the region reveal that it has
formed at the boundary of the massive
Cepheus B molecular cloud
and the hot, young stars of the Cepheus OB 3
association.
The bright rim of
ionized
hydrogen gas is energized by radiation from the hot stars,
dominated by the bright star just to the left of the cave entrance.
Radiation driven ionization fronts
are likely triggering collapsing cores
and new star formation within.
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: molecular cloud
Publications with words: molecular cloud
See also: