The star-forming region around the star R Coronae Australis imaged by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This picture, which covers a field of 33.7 x 31.9 arcminutes is a combination of twelve CCD frames, 67 megapixels each, taken through B, V and R filters, with four exposures of five minutes each. Image: ESO.
R Coronae Australis lies 420 light years away in the heart of a star formation region in the constellation Corona Australis. It is one of several young stars in this region that vary in brightness, still swathed in the clouds of gas and dust from which they formed.
The latest image, which is a composite of twelve separate pictures taken through red, green and blue filters, and which covers a patch of sky equal to the width of the full Moon, reveals previously unseen detail in this complex region of star formation.
This wide field image shows the area around the star R Coronae Australis, and reveals the extent of the huge dust cloud, about eight light-years across, that dominates the centre of the image. Image: Loke Kun Tan (StarryScapes.com). Fierce radiation emitted by these evolving young stars interacts with the surrounding gas, giving rise to the beautiful colours and textures in this stellar portrait. The blue nebulous tones indicate a reflection nebula, resulting from star light that has been reflected off small dust particles. The intense red colours often typical of star forming regions is absent here because the stars, which are similar in mass to our own Sun, do not emit enough ultraviolet light to ionize much of the nearby hydrogen.
The bottom left of the image is dominated by a murky dark cloud. Stars are buried deep within the cloud but the light they emit is completely absorbed by the dust, and can only be detected at infrared wavelengths.
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