August 25, 2011
On the day you were born, the universe was already ancient beyond measure — and yet, in all those billions of years, it had never once...
Portrait of NGC 281
Birthday · August 25, 2011
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APOD published August 25, 2011. Credit: Astro Anarchy. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and it's almost easy to miss stars of open cluster IC 1590. But, formed within the nebula, that cluster's young, massive stars ultimately power the pervasive nebular glow. The eye-catching shapes looming in this portrait of NGC 281 are sculpted columns and dense dust globules seen in silhouette, eroded by intense, energetic winds and radiation from the hot cluster stars. If they survive long enough, the dusty structures could also be sites of future star formation. Playfully called the Pacman Nebula because of its overall shape, NGC 281 is about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This composite image was made through narrow-band filters, but combines emission from the nebula's hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms in a visible spectrum palette. It spans over 80 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 281.
Image credit: Astro Anarchy