(NASA Photo)

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BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhuanet)-- A team of NASA astronomers released a panoramic image which shows in a new level of detail the process of stars' birth and death.

The image on Tuesday is made from a series of 48 shots taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in spring and summer of 2005. It is one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with the telescope's cameras.

Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, the lead investigator in this work, said the photo gives "a glimpse of the violent conditions" in which stars are born and die.

"There are several clues suggesting that our sun and planets were indeed born in a violent region something like this, along with some very hot and massive stars," Smith said. The solar system was formed about 4.6 billion years ago.

The picture, released in celebration of the 17th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's launch, is the 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth -- and death -- is taking place.

The nebula is about 7,500 light years away from Earth in the constellation Carina in a neighboring spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The Hubble image depicts a massive region, but it is only a small portion of the whole nebula.

Scientists say the immense nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are roughly estimated to be at least 50 to 100 times massive than the sun.

(Agencies)