The picture at the top of our home page shows a star-forming region known as the
Eagle Nebula or M16. (Photo credit: P. Challis, Whipple Observatory 1.2 meter
telescope.) The image is made by combining three optical images from three separate
narrow-band color filter exposures. (Red indicates emission by once-ionized sulfur ions,
green indicates twice-ionized oxygen, and blue indicates hydrogen-alpha line emission.)
FUSE will study not only the bright, young stars in such regions,
but also the surrounding gas and dust through the absorption it causes in
the star's light spectrum. These regions out between the stars is known as the
interstellar medium.
More information on this and many other non-copyrighted images
adorning the FUSE pages are available from the
Astronomy Picture
of the Day archive site or from the
Hubble Space Telescope
Public Pictures site.
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