Cauldron of starbirth in nearby active galaxy

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers a stunning unprecedented close-up view of a turbulent firestorm of starbirth along a nearly edge-on dust disk girdling Centaurus A, the nearest active galaxy to Earth.

Brilliant clusters of young blue stars lie along the edge of the dark dust rift. Outside the rift the sky is filled with the soft hazy glow of the galaxy's much older resident population of red giant and red dwarf stars.

The picture is a mosaic of two Hubble Space Telescope images taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, on 1 August 1997 and 10 January 1998. The approximately natural colour is assembled from images taken in blue, green and red light. Details as small as seven light-years across can be resolved. The blue colour is due to the light from extremely hot, newborn stars. The reddish-yellow colour is due in part to hot gas, in part to older stars in the elliptical galaxy and in part to scattering of blue light by dust — the same effect that produces brilliant orange sunsets on Earth.