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For reasons unknown, NGC 6357 is forming some of the most massive stars ever discovered. Near the more obvious Cat's Paw nebula, NGC 6357 houses the open star cluster Pismis 24, home to these tremendously bright and blue stars. The overall red glow near the inner star forming region results from the emission of ionized hydrogen gas. The surrounding nebula, shown here, holds a complex tapestry of gas, dark dust, stars still forming, and newly born stars. The intricate patterns are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity. NGC 6357 spans about 400 light years and lies about 8,000 light years away toward the constellation Scorpius. (Text from Astronomy Picture of the Day)

This image has been chosen as NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for December 20, 2006

Remarkable features Click the image to view and interact with the hi-res image. NGC 6357 is a large star forming region in Scorpius. It has an apparent size of about 50 arc minutes. Pismis 24 is an open cluster that houses some of the most massive stars ever discovered. B257 (Barnard 257) is a small dark nebula, has an apparent size of 10 x 7 arc minutes. HR 6426 is the brightest star in this celestial field, but with a magnitude of 6 is just barely visible to the naked eye from a very dark location.   Find Chart The position of NGC 6357 (in the red circle) in Scorpius. Image from Cartes du Ciel.

In order to produce the color image seen here, I worked with data coming from 2 different photographic plates taken at UK Schmidt Observatory in 1991. The original file is 13,445 × 11,645 pixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. The image show an area of sky large 3.7° × 3.2° (for comparison, the full-Moon is about 0.5° in diameter).
Copyright: Davide De Martin.

Other images of the same celestial field found online

• http://www.astrosurf.com/lorenzi/ccd/ngc6357_hargb.htm by Marco Lorenzi;
• http://astroshed.com/maps/scorpius_files/ngc6357_in_scorpius.htm by the Shed Observatory.

This image is a composite from black and white images taken with the Anglo Australian Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) UK Schmidt Telescope. The images were recorded on two type of glass photographic plates and later they were digitized. Credit: Anglo-Australian Observatory, UK Schmidt Telescope, Digitized Sky Survey.