Within a galaxy hosting around 300 billion stars, here the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a mere handful or two — just about enough to form a single football team. These stellar “teammates” play under the banner of NGC 1333, the cloud of gas and dust which formed them and that they continue to call home. NGC 1333 is located about 1000 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus (The Hero). The cool gas and dust concentrated in this region is generating new stars whose light is then reflecting off the surrounding material, lighting it up and making this object’s lingering presence known to us. NGC 1333 is accordingly classified as a reflection nebula. This image shows just a single region of NGC 1333. Hubble has imaged NGC 1333 more widely before, revealing that the smattering of stars seen here has ample company. Seen in a broader context, this team of stars is but one gathering amongst many in NGC 1333’s celestial Champions League.
Normalmente, dentro de uma galáxia, podemos ter cerca de 300 bilhões de estrelas, porém as vezes é interessante olhar algumas dessas estrelas de forma individual, para entender como elas nascem e evoluem durante suas vidas. Uma maneira de fazer isso é observando as nebulosas, ou melhor dizendo, os verdadeiros berçários de estrelas. A imagem acima, feita pelo Telescópio Espacial Hubble mostra algumas estrelas localizadas na NGC 1333, uma nebulosa, onde é possível ver o gás e a poeira que foram usados como matéria prima para as estrelas e que ainda continuam por ali.
A NGC 133 está localizada a cerca de 1000 anos-luz de distância da Terra, na direção da constelação de Perseus. O gás frio e a poeira concentrados nessa região estão gerando novas estrelas cuja a luz é então refletida no material ao redor iluminando todo o objeto. Devido a isso, a NGC 133 é conhecida como sendo uma nebulosa de reflexão.
Essa imagem mostra apenas uma parte da NGC 133. Abaixo, você pode ver outra imagem da NGC 1333 feita pelo Hubble também, porém mostrando a nebulosa de forma mais ampla. Na imagem mais ampla, as poucas estrelas registradas agora pelo Hubble passam quase que imperceptíveis.
In this image the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the smoking gun of a newborn star, the Herbig–Haro objects numbered 7 to 11 (HH 7–11). These five objects, visible in blue in the top centre of the image, lie within NGC 1333, a reflection nebula full of gas and dust found about a thousand light-years away from Earth. Herbig-Haro objects like HH 7–11 are transient phenomena. Travelling away from the star that created them, at a speed of up to 250 000 kilometres per hour they disappear into nothingness within a few tens of thousands of years. The young star that is the source of HH 7-11 is called SVS 13 and all five objects are moving away from SVS 13 toward the upper left. The current distance between HH 7 and SVS 13 is about 20 000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Herbig–Haro objects are formed when jets of ionised gas ejected by a young star collide with nearby clouds of gas and dust at high speeds. The Herbig-Haro objects visible in this image are no exception to this and were formed when the jets from the newborn star SVS 13 collided with the surrounding clouds. These collisions created the five brilliant clumps of light within the reflection nebula.
