Posts Tagged nebulae

Credit & Copyright: Tony Hallas, astrophoto.com

Something sparkly and pink for your Tuesday. I’m in the midst of a server move, so you’ll either see this, or you won’t… at least, not for a day or two.

The prominent ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is designated IC 5067. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive shape, popularly called The Pelican Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years and follows the curve of the cosmic pelican’s head and neck. Fantastic, dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust sculpted by energetic radiation from hot, massive stars. But stars are also forming within the dark shapes. In fact, twin jets emerging from the tip of the central, dark tendril are the telltale signs of an embedded protostar cataloged as Herbig-Haro 555. The Pelican Nebula itself, also known as IC 5070, is about 2,000 light-years away. To find it, look northeast of bright star Deneb in the high flying constellation Cygnus.

Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler (robgendlerastropics.com); Data Acquisition: Ryan Hannahoe (astronomicalimaging.com)

A beautiful picture for your Thursday. I seem to be taking Wednesdays off, in addition to Mondays. Don’t know how that happened.

Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together in the Trifid Nebula. Also known as M20, this photogenic nebula is visible with good binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos. The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M20 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. Which bright young stars light up the blue reflection nebula is still being investigated. The light from M20 we see today left perhaps 3,000 years ago, although the exact distance remains unknown. Light takes about 50 years to cross M20.

Credit & Copyright: Piotrek Sadowski, astrofotografia.com.pl

Eh, yeah, this is today’s APOD and I try not to do that, but it’s awfully pretty for a Friday, don’t you think?

Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away. Formed in that region only a few million years ago, the massive young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association sculpt the fantastic shapes and power the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions, from previous generations of massive stars, that swept up and compressed the molecular gas. A false-color Hubble palette was used to create this sharp close-up image and shows emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in red, green, and blue hues. At the estimated distance of NGC 6188, the picture spans about 200 light-years.

Image Credit: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortium/HOBYS Key Programme Consortia

Usually I’m pretty quick to come up with what a given image “looks like” or reminds me of; this one’s a bit harder. The texture reminds me of a freshly-broken rock surface. (It could also be tumultuous ocean waves, if the ocean were very multi-colored.) Anyway, I think it’s lovely.

This image from the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory shows the cloud associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation. Herschel collects the infrared light given out by dust. The bright smudges are dusty cocoons containing massive embryonic stars, which will grow up to 10 times the mass of our sun. The small spots near the center of the image are lower mass stellar embryos. The Rosette Nebula itself, and its massive cluster of stars, is located to the right of the picture.

This image is a three-color composite showing infrared wavelengths of 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green), and 250 microns (red). It was made with observations from Herschel’s Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer and the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver instruments.

Herschel is an ESA cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with participation by NASA.