NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula

NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula

It is a vast star-forming region approximately 75 light-years across, where hundreds of stars are being born. The stars give off extremely energetic radiations and ionise the adjacent interstellar clouds, which glow at a whopping 10 million times the brightness of the Sun.

The dark cloud in the centre has a striking resemblance to the statue of liberty, and brilliant glowing streamers outline her shape. These streamers are formed by strong radiations breaking apart and ionising the molecules on the cloud’s surface.

The emissions from different elements were put into different colour channels to differentiate their origins. The blue colour indicates the presence of Oxygen; bright yellow Hydrogen and dark red sulfur (also called 'the Hubble Palette’). It’s an elegant way of combining the beauty of science and nature.

(The data behind this image was from Telescopelive, which I processed using Pixinsight and Photoshop)