Galactic Nurseries

Three vast stellar nurseries stretch across the galaxy in this new image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile. From left, they are the Omega Nebula (Messier 17), the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, made famous as the "pillars of creation" by a Hubble Space Telescope image), and Sharpless 2-54. All three are roughly 7,000 light-years away, stretching from the constellations Serpens to Sagittarius. They are part of a much larger complex of gas and dust that is giving birth to many new stars. [European Southern Observatory]