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Our sun is one of the main reasons why we are all here today. It provides a lot of the energy for life, and without that, I would not write this and you would not be here to read it. We think that stars are ancient things that have always existed, but new ones are being created all the time, and NASA has just captured a magnificent image of a place where new stars are born.
NASA affectionately calls it "butterfly of space", but in reality it is a pair of massive gas clouds. Its official name is Westerhout 40 (W40) and it is a nebula. The W40 and its nebulae are like gigantic pockets of space where materials such as gas and star dust begin to unite to form new objects such as stars.
"In addition to being beautiful, the W40 illustrates how star formation results in the destruction of the clouds that contributed to their creation," says NASA's JPL. "Inside giant clouds of gas and dust in space, the force of gravity gathers materials into a dense mass. Sometimes these clumps reach a critical density that allows the stars to form in the center. "
The nebulae are like nurseries of stars, but the stars are also dying here. In fact, the huge "wings" of the space butterfly, composed of gas and other materials, were projected into space by stellar explosions. In this case, a group of stars in the center of the two big bubbles is responsible for the colorful clouds of W40, and this material that once was the star material is on track to become new stars again.
The image was captured using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This is a remarkably detailed image considering that the nebula is some 1,400 light-years away from Earth. The only image visible here is a composite of four individual photos taken with the infrared camera of the telescope.
Image Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech
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