This is star cluster RCW 38, seen in an 80-million-pixel image captured in visible and infrared light.
The cluster is a so-called stellar nursery – a place where stars are born – 5,500 lightyears from Earth and visible in the constellation Vela.
RCW 38 exhibits pink gas clouds and multicoloured pinpoints of light representing stars of varying ages, in this image captured by the European Southern Observatory's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA).
Exploring the stars in RCW 38
Astronomers say the stars in RCW 38 are less than a million years old, which makes them infants in comparison to our Sun, which is 4.6 billion years old.
What makes it such a hive of stellar birth is because it contains all the ingredients necessary for stars to form.
RCW 38 has dense clouds of gas and cosmic dust. These pockets of vital star-making ingredients grow and grow until they collapse under their own gravity, beginning the process of star formation.
The pink glow of the gas is due to powerful radiation from newborn stars blasting their surroundings.
As a result, much of the star cluster glows brightly.
However, there's a limit to what astronomers can see in visible light, because those dense pockets of gas and dust obscure many newborn stars from view.
That's where infrared comes in. Observing regions like this in infrared light gives astronomers the ability to see through the gas and dust and get a better look.
The telescope – known as VISTA – has a camera called VIRCAM that observes in infrared light, revealing in RCW 38 young stars smothered by dusty cocoons and cold ‘failed’ stars known as brown dwarfs.
This image is part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey, which has produced the most detailed infrared map of our home galaxy ever made.
Since it was taken, VIRCAM has been retired, but is set to be replaced by a new instrument called 4MOST, which will gather spectra from 2,400 celestial objects at once over a large area of the sky.
