Something like 6000 light years away, roughly toward the downtown area of our galaxy, lies NGC 6604, a tight cluster of young, massive, hot, bright stars. Just starting to shrug off the gas cloud of its birth, these stars emit a fierce light that makes the gas glow. When you point the 2.2 meter ESO/MPG telescope at this cluster what you get is startling beauty:
[Click to ennebulenate, or grab the cosmic 8600 x 8400 pixel version.] NGC 6604 is the compact group of bright blue stars in the upper left. This whole complex of gas (called Sharpless 2-54) is about 200 - 250 light years across, making it rather huge! You're only seeing a fraction of it here, though. It's actually part of an even larger series of nebulae which include the more famous Eagle nebula (the Pillars of Creation) and the Omega nebula. The image is a composite ...
