Photo # 3 (Feb 2009)

THACKERAY'S GLOBULES

The cycles of life are endless -- and always serve you, because life is a process that serves Life Itself.
                                     - Neale Donald Walsch

Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), NASA

Rich star fields and glowing hydrogen gas silhouette dense, opaque clouds of interstellar gas and dust in this Hubble Space Telescope close-up of IC 2944, a bright star-forming region in Centaurus, 5,900 light-years away. The largest of these dark globules, first spotted by South African astronomer A. D. Thackeray in 1950, is likely two separate but overlapping clouds, each more than one light-year wide. Combined the clouds contain material equivalent to about 15 times the mass of the Sun. Along with other data, the sharp Hubble images indicate that Thackeray's globules are fractured and churning as a result of intense ultraviolet radiation from young, hot stars already energizing and heating the bright emission nebula. Will they ever collapse to form massive stars? No one knows. These and similar dark globules known to be associated with other star-forming regions may ultimately be dissipated by their hostile environment - like cosmic lumps of butter in a hot frying pan.

That which appears dark and foreboding my contain an energy that births something as wondrous as a star. So with our encounters with darkness on our paths through life.
                                     - Daniel Benor, MD