A close look at the sky around the star formation region RCW 106

This video takes a close-up look at a huge image of part of the southern constellation of Norma (The Carpenter’s Square) where wisps of crimson gas are illuminated by rare, massive stars that have only recently ignited and are still buried deep in thick dust clouds. These scorching-hot, very young stars are only fleeting characters on the cosmic stage and their origins remain mysterious. The vast nebula where these giants were born, known as RCW 106, is captured here in fine detail by ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

The sequence starts with a view of RCW 104, filaments glowing in the intense radiation from a Wolf-Rayet star, passes over the supernova remnant RCW 103, and finally settles on RCW 106 itself.