Catalogue
War And Peace
A chaotic, sprawling emission nebula in Scorpius that lives up to every bit of its dramatic nickname.
Raw → Processed
Around 8,000 light-years away, NGC 6357 is another powerhouse star-forming region, home to some of the most massive and luminous stars known. The bright region resembles a dove in some interpretations ~ peace ~ while the darker, turbulent surrounding gas evokes the chaos of war. Enormous pillars of dust are being sculpted by the blistering radiation of the young star cluster Pismis 24 at its core, whose stars were once thought to exceed the theoretical mass limit for a single star, later resolved to be tight multiples, but no less impressive.