14 DAY TRIAL // The newly installed ArTeMiS camera on the European Southern Observatory's APEX telescope has recently proved its worth by snapping this really cool picture of the Cat's Paw Nebula, otherwise known as NGC 6334.
The picture was released to the public only yesterday, Live Science tells us. As one can easily notice, the Cat's Paw Nebula is pretty much glowing.
Researchers say this is because it is undergoing a period of increased star formation activity. As some prefer saying, it's experiencing a “baby boom.”
“NGC 6334 is forming stars at a more rapid pace than Orion - so rapidly that it appears to be undergoing what might be called a burst of star formation,” Sarah Willis with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said a few months ago at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Interestingly enough, scientists are yet to figure out what caused the nebula to start forming more stars than it usually does.
The cat's Paw Nebula is located at a distance of roughly 5,500 light years from our planet. It sits in the constellation Scorpius.