Pic of the Week: Nebula RCW 7

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): RCW 7, a nebula located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Tan (Chalmers University & University of Virginia), R. Fedriani (Institute for Astrophysics of Andalusia))

This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble space telescope. It shows the nebula called RCW 7, which is located about 5,300 light-years away.

The ESA Hubble site describes the image in this way:

Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat blue background towards the bottom, and become more thick and smoky towards the top. They are lit on one side by stars in the nebula. A thick arc of gas and dust reaches around from the top, where it is brightly lit by many stars in and around it, to the bottom where it is dark and obscuring. Other large stars lie between the clouds and the viewer.