Rosette Nebula

This is a Hubble Space Telescope photo of a small portion of the Rosette Nebula, a huge star-forming region spanning 100 light-years across and located 5,200 light-years away. Hubble zooms into a small portion of the nebula that is only 4 light-years across (the approximate distance between our Sun and the neighbouring Alpha Centauri star system.) Dark clouds of hydrogen gas laced with dust are silhouetted across the image. The clouds are being eroded and shaped by the seething radiation from the cluster of larger stars in the center of the nebula (NGC 2440). An embedded star seen at the tip of a dark cloud in the upper right portion of the image is launching jets of plasma that are crashing into the cold cloud around it. The resulting shock wave is causing a red glow. The colours come from the presence of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

[Image description: A tiny portion of the Rosette Nebula. Very dark gray material shaped like a V extends from just below top left all the way down to the lower right corner and back up toward the top right. It looks like thick smoke that has billowed out irregularly, thicker along the line from top left to bottom right, and looser on the piece that goes toward the top right. Behind the dark gray on the left side, from the bottom left to top center, there is dust that looks like arced claw marks that appears in light orange and yellow. The background at top left is hazier and some blues are covered in semi-transparent orange wisps, which makes sections take on green hues. In the bottom right, the background is bluer. There are a few bright red and purple stars scattered along the right half, most toward the bottom. The largest star is at right-center, just at the edge. It is red and has four diffraction spikes.]