European Space Agency (ESA) published new image taken by the Hubble Space Observatory. By tradition, a festive composition was chosen before Christmas. Multicolored stars are scattered on a bright red background like holiday lights or sparkling snow. Special attention is paid to a small “lump” of cosmic dust and gas in the form of a tadpole, which is far removed from its native environment. From such “tadpoles” stars are born.
In the image, we see a section of the Westerhout 5 nebula. It is located at a distance of 7000 light years from Earth. In addition to the colorful atmosphere, the picture reveals a lot of interesting details. In particular, the “tadpole” shown in the photograph is a so-called evaporating gaseous globule (frEGGs) freely floating in space. Catalog name of the object: [KAG2008] globule 13 и J025838.6+604259.
Evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) have been discovered relatively recently and primarily on the tops of the Pillars of Creation, the iconic images of which the Hubble Observatory took in 1995. The subclass frEGGs is distinguished by the fact that its representatives have a pronounced “head” and “tail”.
The high density of dust and gas inside such clumps of matter leads to the fact that the process of photoevaporation in them is more difficult than in the surrounding more rarefied matter of the nebula. As a rule, photoevaporation is provoked by young and hot stars. They emit intense ultraviolet light, which ionizes the gas and disperses it (evaporates). More dense globules prevent ionization from penetrating inside and scattering their substance. Therefore, it is believed that it is in globules that conditions are created for the emergence of protostars. From this “tadpole” in the Hubble image, a star will someday also be born.
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