NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

NGC 604: Giant Stellar Nursery

Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33 [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…], a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 [ http://www.seds.org…] was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…]. Many young stars from this cloud are visible [ http://hubblesite.o…] in the above image [ http://heritage.sts…] from the Hubble Space Telescope [ http://www.stsci.ed…], along with what is left of the initial gas cloud [ http://heritage.sts…]. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova [ http://heasarc.gsfc…]. The brightest stars [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest cloud of ionized hydrogen [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] in our Milky Way [ http://www.damtp.ca…]'s close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…].

NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/] and the Hubble Heritage Team [ mailto:heritage@stsc i.edu ] (AURA [ http://www.aura-ast…]/STScI [ http://www.stsci.ed…])

Large Magellanic Cloud

M33

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Washington, D.C.

Aura

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

New General Catalogue (NGC)

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap031209