HEIC: Dazzling Diamonds of Trumpler 14

[bystander]

Dazzling Diamonds of Trumpler 14
ESA Hubble Photo Release | 2016 Jan 21

[img3="Credit: NASA & ESA, Jesús Maíz Apellániz (IAA)"]http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/ar ... c1601a.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

Single stars are often overlooked in favour of their larger cosmic cousins — but when they join forces, they create truly breathtaking scenes to rival even the most glowing of nebulae or swirling of galaxies. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the star cluster Trumpler 14. One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous stars in our entire galaxy.

Around 1100 open clusters have so far been discovered within the Milky Way, although many more are thought to exist. Trumpler 14 is one of these, located some 8000 light-years away towards the centre of the well-known Carina Nebula.

At a mere 500 000 years old — a small fraction of the Pleiades open cluster’s age of 115 million years — Trumpler 14 is not only one of the most populous clusters within the Carina Nebula, but also the youngest. However, it is fast making up for lost time, forming stars at an incredible rate and putting on a stunning visual display.

This region of space houses one of the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the entire Milky Way — a spectacular family of young, bright, white-blue stars. These stars are rapidly working their way through their vast supplies of hydrogen, and have only a few million years of life left before they meet a dramatic demise and explode as supernovae. In the meantime, despite their youth, these stars are making a huge impact on their environment. They are literally making waves! ...

Open Cluster Trumpler 14
Hubble Heritage | STScI | AURA | 2016 Jan 21

Hubble Unveils a Tapestry of Dazzling Diamond-Like Stars
NASA | STScI | HUbbleSite | 2016 Jan 21

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[Ann]

It's a great picture of an amazing cluster. I particularly like seeing all the little red stars scattered among the dazzling diamonds like little grains of golden sand.

But I find the colors confusing. Specifically, I wonder why the brightest stars are so non-blue. The cluster is so young that all the stars are still on the main sequence, and therefore the most massive stars should be bluer than the rest. Instead, it is the medium-bright stars that are the bluest.

I also wonder why the background is blue. It shouldn't really be. If an OIII filter had been used, I would understand the blue background, but none of the filters has a wavelength close to 500 nm. Instead the filters are reasonably similar to RGB ones, apart from the 850 nm infrared filter.

Has the image been "creatively colored" in spite of the RGB-like filters? It is a great image nonetheless, but it would be interesting to hear why the colors look so "mapped".

Ann

[geckzilla]

I don't have answers to your questions, but here's a version I did a bit over a year ago for you to compare with: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/14922981167/

I know I didn't do anything in particular to force the background to be blue. It just kind of falls out of the data like that.