This glorious celestial nursery is packed with baby stars

The European Southern Observatory has taken the most detailed image yet of the southern constellation of Ara, otherwise known as The Altar, using the VLT Survey Telescope. The image was taken at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, and in it we get an incredible look at clusters of stars, regions forming stars, emission nebulae, and more. This particular sliver of space is located about 4,000 light years from our own planet. We've a link to the high-resolution version after the jump!

Says the ESO, at the heart of this image lies NGC 6193, an open star cluster with approximately 30 bright stars, with two of them in particular being "very hot giant stars". So bright are those stars, the emission nebula located close by is primarily illuminated by them (shown on the right side of the open star cluster in the image below).

Also notable are the "baby stars", the next generation of stars as ESO calls them, which are driven by the "intense stellar wind" and radiation from NGC 6193's stars. This works by the cloud fragments collapsing and then heating up, a process that is said to slowly form the new stars. Says the European Southern Observatory, these regions usually have lifespans of a few million year; most of the material in the region won't be turned into new stars, however, instead blowing out into space.

As for the image itself, rather than what it shows, it was made from in excess of 500 pictures that were snapped using four color filters (each a different color) through the aforementioned telescope. Combined, exposure time exceeded two days, and the ending result is the as-of-now most detailed photograph of the area we have to date.

Download the full-size image (808 MB) here. Smaller versions can be found here.

SOURCE: European Southern Observatory