Il potente occhio del Very Large Telescope dell'ESO che opera dai cristallini e bui cieli del Cile ha ottenuto una immagine di stupefacente bellezza di NGC3603, una regione di intensa formazione stellare distante circa 22mila anni luce dalla Terra. Avvolte da estese nubi gassose sono visibili migliaia di stelle neonate la cui età viene stimata in non più di un milione di anni. NCG3603 rappresenta un ottimo banco test models of stellar formation and evolution, these processes also being very common in all galaxies, are unlikely to be observed with the detail that instead, thanks to its relative proximity, it is possible in NGC3603. The very form in which the nebula is presented by the intense radiation emitted by hot young stars sculpts and shapes the extended gaseous formations. Inside you can look at stars at different stages of their evolution, from those who still ahead of him billions of years of life to some now close to explode as supernovae. In fact, the lifespan of stars depends on their mass: the more massive the shorter their life. For example, a star small as the Sun can live up to 10 billion years, while the stars much more massive exploding as supernovae within a few million years. The stars of NGC3603, although all born more or less simultaneously, are presented with the masses, and therefore duration of life, very different from each other. They range from mass stars also smaller than that of the Sun Giant heavy tens of solar masses. In particular, we identified three types of Wolf-Rayet stars, extremely bright and massive stars that expel large amounts of material before exploding. Thanks to the observations carried out with the VLT has been possible to ascertain the presence of what is considered the most massive stars in the galaxy: a giant of 120 solar masses in a binary system whose companion she is also a giant of 86 solar masses.
Credit: ESO
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