Resembling the fury of a raging sea, this image actually shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen gas. This photograph, taken by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within, a hotbed of star formation. The Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The wave-like patterns of gas have been sculpted and illuminated by a torrent of ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars, which lie outside the picture to the upper left. The glow of these patterns accentuates the three-dimensional structure of the gases. The ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds. The warmed surfaces glow orange and red in this photograph. The intense heat and pressure cause some material to stream away from those surfaces, creating the glowing veil of even hotter greenish gas that masks background structures. The pressure on the tips of the waves may trigger new star formation within them. This image is roughly 3 light-years across. The colors in the image represent various gases. Red represents sulfur; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.
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