Stellar nursery NGC 3603*
eso_eso1005a February 3rd, 2010
Credit: ESO
NGC 3603 is a starburst region : a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22,000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying the intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their large distance. The newly released image, obtained with the FORS instrument attached to one of the four 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescopes at Cerro Paranal, Chile, is a three-colour combination of exposures acquired through visible and near-infrared (V, R, I) filters. This image portrays a wider field around the stellar cluster and reveals the rich texture of the surrounding clouds of gas and dust. The field of view is 7 arcminutes wide. This image is available as a mounted image in the ESOshop.
Provider: European Southern Observatory
Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1005a/
Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Full Size Image
(2129 x 2148)
Source TIFF (10.4 MB)
- Additional Sizes (JPG)
- 317 x 320 (73.2 KB)
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- 495 x 500 (141 KB)
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Image Details
Position Details
Color Mapping
- ID
- eso1005a
- Subject Category
- B.3.6.4.1 B.4.1.2
- Subject Name
- NGC 3603
- Credits
- ESO
- Release Date
- 2010-02-03T12:00:00
- Lightyears
- Redshift
- Reference Url
- https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1005a/
- Type
- Observation
- Image Quality
- Distance Notes
- Distance in light years from ESO.
- Facility
- Very Large Telescope, Very Large Telescope, Very Large Telescope
- Instrument
- FORS1, FORS1, FORS1
- Color Assignment
- Red, Green, Blue
- Band
- Optical, Optical, Infrared
- Bandpass
- R, V, I
- Central Wavelength
- Start Time
- Integration Time
- Dataset ID
- Notes
- Coordinate Frame
- ICRS
- Equinox
- J2000
- Reference Value
- 168.788166, -61.271524
- Reference Dimension
- 2129.0, 2148.0
- Reference Pixel
- 1040.07684838, 613.958915305
- Scale
- -7.011794e-05, 7.011794e-05
- Rotation
- 0.01785026487
- Coordinate System Projection:
- TAN
- Quality
- Full
- FITS Header
- Notes
- Creator (Curator)
- European Southern Observatory
- URL
- http://www.eso.org/
- Name
- Telephone
- Address
- Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
- City
- Garching bei München
- State/Province
- Postal Code
- D-85748
- Country
- Germany
- Rights
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
- Publisher
- European Southern Observatory
- Publisher ID
- eso
- Resource ID
- eso1005a
- Resource URL
- https://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/original/eso1005a.tif
- Related Resources
- Metadata Date
- 2010-01-25T10:40:50+01:00
- Metadata Version
- 1.1
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
