NGC 6357 “Kaleidoscope in the sky”

This is one of the most fascinating and colorful nebulae in the cosmos!

Light years of woven dust and gases like a priceless work of art. It has intricate details of shapes from pillars, mountains, caverns, and wispy intricate fragments. The colors are impressive as well -- the blues from Oxygen, the reds from Hydrogen and the yellows from Sulfur. All together they look as if you’re peering into a kaleidoscope. Quite the sight.

NGC 6357, also known as the Lobster Nebula and War and Peace Nebula is a large emission nebula located approximately 5,900 light years away in the constellation Scorpius.

The nebula contains many proto-stars (very young stars that are still gathering mass from their parent molecular cloud). These stars are shielded by dark discs of gas and wrapped in expanding "cocoons" or expanding gases surrounding these small stars.

The nebula contains many unusually massive stars whose interstellar winds, powerful magnetic fields, gravity, and radiation pressures are carving complex structures in the surrounding dust and gas. The hot, luminous O-type stars are the main ionizing source in the area.

The nebula hosts several massive young star clusters and is one of the most prominent star-forming regions in the southern sky.

Open star cluster, Pismis 24, near its center (left center in this image) is one of the brightest stars in the cluster. Pismis 24-1 was thought possibly to be the most massive on record, approaching 300 solar masses, until it was discovered to be a multiple system of at least three stars; component stars would still remain near 100 solar masses each, making them among the more massive stars on record.

Data: SWOS, Mazlin, Forman, Parker, Hanson

Image calibration and processing: Mark Hanson

24” Planewave CDK, SBIG 16803, L600 mount.

Enjoy,

Mark Hanson

Here is a nice calming video of “Kaleidoscope in the sky”

You can play picture in picture while you read the description.