Gum 29, Westerlund 2, CDK24

GUM 29,Westerlund 2 The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resembles a glittering fireworks display at the heart of Nebula Gum 29. The giant cluster of about 3,000 stars, called Westerlund 2 seen in the center of the image, resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Carina. For a nebula within the Milky Way it is unusual to be this distant. The reason is that it is in the galactic plane located in the Carina-Sagitarius arm.  The giant star cluster is only about 2 million years old and contains some of our galaxy’s hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. Some of its heftiest stars unleash torrents of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds of charged particles that etch at the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud. The nebula reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. The pillars, composed of dense gas and thought to be incubators for new stars, are a few light-years tall and point to the central star cluster. Other dense regions surround the pillars, including reddish-brown filaments of gas and dust. This image was taken in Rio Hurtado Chile using Martin Pugh’s 24″ Planewave CDK24 and is done in false color in the Hubble palette. Red in the image is emission from Sulfur gas, green from Hydrogen, and blue from Oxygen. The stars are true color.