Posts Tagged nebulae
Veils
I’ve always loved imagery of the Veil Nebula/Cygnus Loop — I guess I’m a sucker for wisps of color. These Hubble images rock my socks off (artistically speaking.)
Credit for both images: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: J. Hester (Arizona State University)
This image shows a small portion of the Veil Nebula – the shattered remains of a supernova that exploded some 5-10,000 years ago. The intertwined rope-like filaments of gas result from the enormous amounts of energy released as the fast-moving debris from the explosion ploughs into its surroundings and creates shock fronts. These shocks, driven by debris moving at 600,000 kilometres per hour, heat the gas to millions of degrees. It is the subsequent cooling of this material that produces the brilliantly coloured glows.
This portion of the Veil Nebula is located in a magnificent part of the Veil known as the Witch’s Broom Nebula to the east (to the right in the overview image). The entire structure spans about 3 degrees, corresponding to about 6 full moons. The bright blue star – dubbed 52 Cygni and unrelated to the supernova explosion – can be observed with the naked eye on a clear summer’s night.
This small portion of the Veil Nebula is located in the larger segment seen in its western part (the top left corner of the large ground-based overview image). The entire structure spans about 3 degrees, corresponding to about 6 full moons.
Medusa
Credit: H. Schweiker/NOAO/AURA/NSF and T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage and NOAO/AURA/NSF
This beautiful image came through my Twitter stream Friday night, so I’m passing the savings onto you! (Thanks @TaviGreiner for retweeting it, and @jimcook310 for finding the larger versions!) Scientifically speaking, this nebula is known as Abell 21, but hey, I can see the “Medusa” bit. I really can. [nod nod]
The Medusa nebula, known scientifically as Abell 21, is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. It is estimated to be over 4 light-years across. This image was taken on Oct 24th, 2008 at the Mayall telescope with the mosaic camera, with [OIII] (assigned a blue color) and H-alpha (orange) filters
This image was released during the 100 Hours of Astronomy webcast, “Around the World in 80 Telescopes” held from April 3-4, 2009, during the International Year of Astronomy 2009.
Space Quilting
Posted by Danielle in Crafts & Hobby Projects on February 22, 2010
“The Pillars of Creation” © Jimmy McBride
This is a quilt by the talented Jimmy McBride. A QUILT. Of the Eagle Pillars Hubble photo. You know, this one?
He has many fantastic quilts in his portfolio, and I owe my finding of Mr. McBride to this article, via @avgjanecrafter. WOW. Space quilts!!
“The Pillars of Creation” © Jimmy McBride
Cosmic Cat
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
It’s beautiful, it’s red, it’s the Cat’s Paw Nebula:
ESO has just released a stunning new image of the vast cloud known as the Cat’s Paw Nebula or NGC 6334. This complex region of gas and dust, where numerous massive stars are born, lies near the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, and is heavily obscured by intervening dust clouds.
Few objects in the sky have been as well named as the Cat’s Paw Nebula, a glowing gas cloud resembling the gigantic pawprint of a celestial cat out on an errand across the Universe. British astronomer John Herschel first recorded NGC 6334 in 1837 during his stay in South Africa. Despite using one of the largest telescopes in the world at the time, Herschel seems to have only noted the brightest part of the cloud, seen here towards the lower left.
NGC 6334 lies about 5500 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion) and covers an area on the sky slightly larger than the full Moon. The whole gas cloud is about 50 light-years across. The nebula appears red because its blue and green light are scattered and absorbed more efficiently by material between the nebula and Earth. The red light comes predominantly from hydrogen gas glowing under the intense glare of hot young stars.
NGC 6334 is one of the most active nurseries of massive stars in our galaxy and has been extensively studied by astronomers. The nebula conceals freshly minted brilliant blue stars — each nearly ten times the mass of our Sun and born in the last few million years. The region is also home to many baby stars that are buried deep in the dust, making them difficult to study. In total, the Cat’s Paw Nebula could contain several tens of thousands of stars.
Particularly striking is the red, intricate bubble in the lower right part of the image. This is most likely either a star expelling large amount of matter at high speed as it nears the end of its life or the remnant of a star that already has exploded.
Planetary Formation
An interesting new composite from Hubble — get it large to really examine the highlight areas:
How do planets form? To help find out, the Hubble Space Telescope was tasked to take a detailed look at one of the more interesting of all astronomical nebulae, the Great Nebula in Orion. The Orion nebula, visible with the unaided eye near the belt in the constellation of Orion, is an immense nearby starbirth region and probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Insets to the above mosaic show numerous proplyds, many of which are stellar nurseries likely harboring planetary systems in formation. Some proplyds glow as close disks surrounding bright stars light up, while other proplyds contain disks further from their host star, contain cooler dust, and hence appear as dark silhouettes against brighter gas. Studying this dust, in particular, is giving insight for how planets are forming. Many proplyd images also show arcs that are shock waves – fronts where fast moving material encounters slow moving gas. The Orion Nebula lies about 1,500 light years distant and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as our Sun.
Star-Forming Festivities
A beautiful holiday image from Hubble, just released today!
Just in time for the holidays: a Hubble Space Telescope picture postcard of hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.
The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years. The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the birth and evolution of stars in the universe. The Hubble observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.
Flame Nebula
A fantastic image from the European Southern Observatory:
This image shows the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings. It is the first to be released publicly from VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope, and reveals the cluster of very young stars at the object’s heart. The wide-field VISTA view also includes the glow of the reflection nebula NGC 2023, and the ghostly outline of the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) towards the lower right. The bright blue star (right) is one of the three bright stars forming the Belt of Orion. The image was created from VISTA images taken through J, H and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. Credit: ESO
Dusty Rosette
Dust Sculptures in the Rosette Nebula, Credit & Copyright: John Ebersole
This photo by John Ebersole was featured on APOD last week; it’s breathtakingly beautiful.
What creates the cosmic dust sculptures in the Rosette Nebula? Noted for the common beauty of its overall shape, parts of the Rosette Nebula, also known as NGC 2237, show beauty even when viewed up close. Visible above are globules of dark dust and gas that are slowly being eroded away by the energetic light and winds by nearby massive stars. Left alone long enough, the molecular-cloud globules would likely form stars and planets. The above image was taken in very specific colors of Sulfur (shaded red), Hydrogen (green), and Oxygen (blue). The Rosette Nebula spans about 50 light-years across, lies about 4,500 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).
Cosmic Candy Floss
Saw this lovely new Hubble release on Universe Today:
Another gorgeous image from Hubble! This close-up of NGC 7023, or the Iris Nebula, shows an area filled with cosmic dust. Illuminated from above by the nearby star HD 200775, the dust resembles pink cotton candy, accentuated with diamond-like stars. The “cotton candy” is actually made up of tiny particles of solid matter, with sizes from ten to a hundred times smaller than those of the dust grains we find on Earth, and the “diamonds” are both background and foreground stars.
It’s images like this one that just take my breath away… and it really does look like cotton candy! Known as “candy floss” in the UK. Wikipedia tells me it was introduced at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 as “fairy floss”, and it is still known as such in Australia. Which I did not know, so there you go. Knowledge is power.
South of Orion
Photo by Robert Gendler
A lovely burgundy view of the sky in this APOD from 2006:
South of the large star-forming region known as the Orion Nebula, lies bright blue reflection nebula NGC 1999. The nebula is marked with a dark inverted T-shape at the lower left in a broad cosmic vista that spans over 10 light-years. The dark shape is a dense gas and dust cloud, or Bok globule, seen in silhouette against the bright nebula, and likely a site of future star formation. At the edge of the Orion molecular cloud complex some 1,500 light-years distant, NGC 1999’s illumination is provided by the embedded variable star V380 Orionis. The region abounds with energetic young stars producing jets and outflows that create luminous shock waves, including HH (Herbig-Haro) 1 and 2 just below and left of NGC 1999, and the apparent cascade of reddish arcs and bow shocks beginning at the upper right. The stellar jets and outflows push through the surrounding material at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second.
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