Hubble Unveils a Tapestry of Dazzling Diamond-Like Stars

January 21, 2016 10:00AM (EST)Release ID: 2016-03
Mottled, translucent, cloud-like structures of light blue, medium blue, gray, orange, and brown appear across a black background. Sprinkled throughout are hundreds of points of light, which are stars. Most are white, but some are blue, yellow, or red. Most are tiny, but dozens are large, white, and dazzling, like glittering diamonds. Large, white spikes appear near some stars, like crosshairs emanating from their centers. A tiny, black, irregular blotch appears left of center, looking like a small ink blot on the image.

Summary

Some of the Milky Way's "celebrity stars" — opulent, attention-getting, and short-lived — can be found in this Hubble Space Telescope image of the glittering star cluster called Trumpler 14. It is located 8,000 light-years away in the Carina Nebula, a huge star-formation region in our galaxy. Because the cluster is only 500,000 years old, it has one of the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the entire Milky Way. Like some Hollywood celebrities, the stars will go out in a flash. Within just a few million years they will burn out and explode as supernovae. But the story's not over. The blast waves will trigger the formation of a new generation of stars inside the nebula in an ongoing cycle of star birth and death.

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