Article Posted on : - Jul 14, 2010

The new image of NGC 2467 acquired by NASA/ESA Hubble telescope.

PARIS (BNS): A stellar nursery giving birth to hot young stars in distant Universe has been captured by Hubble Space Telescope.

The star-forming region, NGC 2467, lies in the southern constellation of Puppis around 13,000 light years away from Earth. A vast cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, NGC 2467 serves as an incubator for new young stars.

While some youthful stars have emerged from the cloud, emitting fierce ultraviolate radiation and thereby illuminating the entire region, many others still remain hidden.

Studies have shown that most of the radiation comes from the single hot and brilliant massive star just above the centre of the image. Its fierce radiation has cleared the surrounding region and some of the next generation stars are forming in the denser regions around the edge, ESA said in its Hubble site.

The new-found ‘stellar cradle’ would help astrophyscists determine the distance and chemical composition of galaxies some of which contain massive star-forming regions having tens of thousands of stars.