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ABOUT THIS IMAGE: This new image taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope depicts bright, blue, newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. At the heart of the star-forming region, lies star cluster NGC 602. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot young stars is sculpting the inner edge of the outer portions of the nebula, slowly eroding it away and eating into the material beyond. The diffuse outer reaches of the nebula prevent the energetic outflows from streaming away from the . Ridges of dust and gaseous filaments are seen towards the northwest (in the upper-left part of the image) and towards the southeast (in the lower right-hand corner). Elephant trunk-like dust pillars point towards the hot blue stars and are tell-tale signs of their eroding effect. In this region it is possible with Hubble to trace how the star formation started at the center of the cluster and propagated outward, with the youngest stars still forming today along the dust ridges. The Small Magellanic Cloud, in the constellation Tucana, is roughly 200,000 light-years from the Earth. Its proximity to us makes it an exceptional laboratory to perform in-depth studies of star formation processes and their evolution in an environment slightly different from our own Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies such as the Small Magellanic Cloud, with significantly fewer stars compared to our own galaxy, are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. The study of star formation within this dwarf galaxy is particularly interesting to astronomers because its primitive nature means that it lacks a large percentage of the heavier elements that are forged in successive generations of stars through nuclear fusion. 关于本图： 这张图片由哈勃空间望远镜拍摄。记录了在小麦哲伦云中一个恒星形成的区域，新诞生的明亮的蓝色恒星将该区域的中心吹出一个空洞。 在恒星形成的中心区域是星团NGC602。从年轻炽热的恒星发出强烈的高能量辐射，这些辐射塑出包围着它的星云的内部边界，并缓慢的向远处侵蚀并蚕食着远处的物质。 在西北部（图片的左上部）和东南部（图片的右下角），尘埃和气体成脊状延伸。指向蓝色热星的象鼻状尘埃柱是辐射侵蚀效果的证据。在这个区域，哈勃描绘出恒星如何从中心开始诞生及怎样向外传播，现在最年轻的恒星仍然沿着尘埃脊在形成。 迦南座中的小麦哲伦云距地球大约200，000光年。它如此接近我们，环境又与我们的银河系稍有不同，这使它成为一个特别的实验室，使我们能更加深入的了解恒星的形成过程和演化。 如小麦哲伦云这样的矮星系——与我们的银河系相比恒星数少得多——被认为是巨星系的形成基础。在矮星系中研究恒星形成对天文学家来讲十分有趣，因为它原始的状态意味着它缺乏大比例的从前代恒星中心产生的重元素
图片来源：
哈勃空间望远镜STEIS(Space Telescope Electronic Information Service)http://www.stsci.edu/
[ 本帖最后由 ghostinsky 于 2007-4-18 19:59 编辑 ] | 
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