WR23 and Interstellar Clouds in Carina
Stars can be like artists. With interstellar gas as a canvas, a massive and tumultuous Wolf-Rayet star has created the picturesque ruffled half-circular filaments called WR23, on the image left. Additionally, the winds and radiation from a small cluster of stars, NGC 3324 , have sculpted a 35 light year cavity on the upper right, with its right side appearing as a recognizable face in profile. This region's popular name is the Gabriela Mistral Nebul a for the famous Chilean poet . Together, these interstellar clouds lie about 8,000 light-years away in the Great Carina Nebula , a complex stellar neighborhood harboring numerous clouds of gas and dust rich with imagination inspiring shapes . The featured telescopic view captures these nebulae's characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms mapped to the red, green, and blue hues of the popular Hubble Palette . New: APOD now available in Bulgarian from Bulgaria