A stunning image of star cluster RCW 38 has been captured by a telescope in Chile, showing glorious detail of the object located 5,500 light-years away. Located in the constellation of Vela, this star cluster is bursting with dust and gas, making it fertile ground for the birth of new stars.
The cluster holds around 2,000 stars, most of which are far younger than our sun and are therefore more active. Many of the dots of color are created by these young, hot stars which give off large amounts of radiations that causes the dust around them to glow brightly.
You can find a huge version of the image here, which allows you to zoom in and see the many details captured in this remarkable data.
“The picture was taken with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), operating in Chile’s Atacama Desert,” the European Southern Observatory (ESO) explains. “It shows a mixture of gas, dust and stars, creating an extravagant, yet spectacular landscape. As VISTA observes infrared light, it is able to peer through most of the dust in this region, which would block our view when observing in visible light. Behind the dust, VISTA is showing young stars within dusty cocoons and cold ‘failed’ stars known as brown dwarfs, thus revealing the secrets within these young stellar nurseries.”
As well as the infrared image, ESO also shared an image of the same cluster but captured in the visible light range, which is the same portion of the spectrum that our eyes can see. As dust is opaque in visible light, and there is a great deal of dust in this cluster, most of the details of its structure are hidden. There’s also a slider that lets you flick between the two images to compare them.
The infrared image was taken as part of a survey by the VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) telescope. That same telescope recently produced the most detailed infrared map to date of the Milky Way, showing some of the wonders of our own galaxy that are visible in the infrared portion of the spectrum. Space telescopes like James Webb also have instruments operating in the infrared, allowing them to peer through dust clouds and to track potentially dangerous asteroids.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.