Beautiful space image captures star formation zone

This startling image shows two dramatic star formation regions in the southern Milky Way.

It was captured by the Wide Field Imager at European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile and is actually made up of a mosaic of images.

But don’t be fooled into thinking the two clusters are next to each other though.

On the left is the star cluster NGC 3603, located 20,000 light-years away, in the Carina–Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The second object, on the right, is a collection of glowing gas clouds known as NGC 3576 that lies only about half as far from Earth.

(G.Beccari/ESO)

NGC 3603 is in an area of very active star formation. Stars are born in dark and dusty regions of space, largely hidden from view. But as the very young stars gradually start to shine and clear away their surrounding cocoons of material, they become visible and create glowing clouds in the surrounding material, known as HII regions.

NGC 3576, on the right of the image, also lies in the Carina–Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way. But it is located only about 9000 light-years from Earth — much closer than NGC 3603, but appearing next to it in the sky.

If you’re trying to work out exactly where this picture is in the sky – north is 0.4 degrees right of vertical.