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EFE / Berlin
A team of astronomers managed to capture a detailed and colorful image of the RCW 38 star group, located in the constellation of Vela, at 5,500 light-years from the Earth, using the infrared HAWK-I wave system, reported the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The infrared device, installed in the Long Range Telescope (VLT) located in Parbad, Chile, has provided a clear picture that shows this young cluster of stars surrounded by intensely bright and detailed gas clouds, with traces of dark dust resembling vine around the core.
The central zone is represented as a region colored in blue and inhabited by many young, hot and mbadive stars, as well as the stars that are still in formation.
The radiation emitted by the stars makes the surrounding gases shine intensely, unlike the stars. cooler cosmic dust currents flowing through the region and shining in dark shades of red and orange.
Although there are previous images of this region, these were obtained by visible wavelengths, which provides images with fewer stellar bodies, because the dust and the gas block the view of the cluster.
The HAWK-I, on the other hand, allows to look through the dust bands by means of infrared observations, the same as allows to obtain images of neighboring galaxies, large nebulae, individual stars and exoplanets.
To get a sharp picture, the adaptive optics GRAAL module played an important role: through the use of four laser beams projected into the night sky. as artificial reference stars to correct the effects of atmospheric turbulence.
The image was captured as part of a set of test observations, cone as a scientific verification, of the two devices, installed in the long-range telescope.
ESO is an intergovernmental organization of science and technology and operates from three sites, recognized for their quality of observation, located in the Atacama Desert. Chile: La Silla, Parbad and Chajnantor
The VLT is a set of four "unitary telescopes", each with a primary mirror of 8.2 meters in diameter, with which it was possible to obtain images of Celestial objects just visible of a magnitude of 30, which amounts to seeing objects 4,000 million times weaker than those seen at the naked eye.
Thanks to the powerful ALMA radio telescope and the four huge VLT telescopes, astronomers are getting closer to the most sought-after stars in the universe: the first stars that illuminate the space.
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