This image is released as part of the Early Release Observations from ESA’s Euclid space mission. All data from these initial observations are made public on 23 May 2024– including a handful of unprecedented new views of the nearby Universe, this being one.
This image is a higher resolution, close-up cutout from a larger frame featuring Messier 78, a vibrant nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust, and its surroundings. This image illustrates how newly forming stars create a ‘cavity’ in the surrounding molecular cloud by generating winds of charged particles. The colours relate to ionised atomic hydrogen (the main component of the cloud; blue) and the absorption and scattering of light by dust grains (red).
[Image description: The image shows hundreds of stars, some brighter than others. The stars seem to light up their cloud-like surroundings in purple. A darker structure spans the image in an arch from upper left to bottom right. The bottom of this arch runs into dense clouds forming the darkest part of the image.]