Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2016

T he small smattering of bright stars at the centre of this wide-field view is Messier 18, an open star cluster con- taining stars that formed together from the same massive cloud of gas and dust. This picture, which also shows part of the bright Omega Nebula (Messier 17) at the top, was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Sur- vey 2. [ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2] hot stars like these are emitting in- tense ultraviolet light which strips the surrounding gas of its electrons and causes it to emit the faint glow seen on the previous pages image. Given the right conditions, this ma- terial could one day col- lapse in on itself and provide the Milky Way with yet another brood of stars — a star forma- tion process that may continue indefinitely. This mammoth 30,577 x 20,108 pixel image was captured using the Ome- gaCAM camera, which is attached to the VLT Sur- vey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observa- tory in Chile. T his sequence takes the viewer from a wide view of the Milky Way deep into the central regions, where many bright star form- ing regions and star clusters can be seen. The final view is a close-up of the sky around the bright star clus- ter Messier 18 taken with the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. [ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)] n