This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, resembles a soaring, celestial angel. The outstretched "wings" of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium.
Sharpless 2-106 (Sh2-106 or S106 for short) lies nearly 2,000 light-years from us. The nebula measures several light-years in length. It appears in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way Galaxy.
A massive, young star, IRS 4 (Infrared Source 4), is responsible for the furious activity we see in the nebula. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the "wings" of this image.
A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an "hourglass" shape. Hubble's sharp resolution reveals ripples and ridges in the gas as it interacts with the cooler interstellar medium.
Dusky red veins surround the blue emission from the nebula. The faint light emanating from the central star reflects off of tiny dust particles. This illuminates the environment around the star, showing darker filaments of dust winding beneath the blue lobes.
Detailed studies of the nebula have also uncovered several hundred brown dwarfs. At purely infrared wavelengths, more than 600 of these sub-stellar objects appear. These "failed" stars weigh less than a tenth of our Sun. Because of their low mass, they cannot produce sustained energy through nuclear fusion like our Sun does. They encompass the nebula in a small cluster.
The Hubble images were taken in February 2011 with the Wide Field Camera 3. Visible narrow-band filters that isolate the hydrogen gas were combined with near-infrared filters that show structure in the cooler gas and dust.
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Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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Tags: Hubble Space Telescope Nebula Hubble Space Telescope Astronomical Hubble Telescope Sharpless 2-106 Sh2-106 S106 IRS 4 Milky Way Galaxy Infrared Souce 4 brown dwarfs WFC3 space astronomy NASA
This close-up, visible-light view by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals previously unseen details of the Ring Nebula.
The object is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. The Hubble observations reveal that the nebula's shape is more complicated than astronomers thought. The blue gas in the nebula's center is actually a football-shaped structure that pierces the red doughnut-shaped material. Hubble also uncovers the detailed structure of the dark, irregular knots of dense gas embedded along the inner rim of the ring. The knots look like spokes in a bicycle. The Hubble images have allowed astronomers to match up the knots with the spikes of light around the bright, main ring, which are a shadow effect.
The Ring Nebula is a well-known planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star. The tiny white dot in the center of the nebula is the star's hot core, called a white dwarf.
The nebula is about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The structure measures roughly one light-year across.
These Hubble observations were taken September 19, 2011, by the Wide Field Camera 3. In the image, the deep blue color in the center represents helium; the cyan color of the inner ring is the glow of hydrogen and oxygen; and the reddish color of the outer ring is from nitrogen and sulfur.
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Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA) – ESA/Hubble Collaboration
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Tags: Hubble Space Telescope Nebula Hubble Space Telescope Astronomical Hubble Telescope Ring Nebula Lyra NGC 6720 Messier 57 M57 Planetary Nebula white dwarf WFC3 NASA space astronomy
The Bug Nebula, NGC 6302, is one of the brightest and most extreme planetary nebulae known. The fiery, dying star at its center is shrouded by a blanket of icy hailstones. This NASA Hubble Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 image shows impressive walls of compressed gas, laced with trailing strands and bubbling outflows. A dark, dusty torus surrounds the inner nebula (seen at the upper right).
At the heart of the turmoil is one of the hottest stars known. Despite a sizzling temperature of at least 450,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the star itself has never been seen, as it is hidden by the blanket of dust and shines most brightly in the ultraviolet, making it hard to observe. The Bug Nebula lies about 4,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Scorpius.
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Credit: NASA, ESA, and A.Zijlstra (UMIST, Manchester, UK)
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Tags: Bug Nebula NGC 6302 Scorpius Planetary Nebula Hubble Space Telescope Nebula Hubble Space Telescope Astronomical Hubble Telescope dusty torus NASA astronomy space WFPC2
This Hubble Space Telescope portrait reveals the gaseous remains of an exploded massive star that erupted 1,700 years ago.
The stellar corpse, a supernova remnant named 1E 0102.2-7219, met its demise in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
The image shows ribbons of gaseous clumps speeding away at from the explosion site at an average speed of 2 million miles per hour. At that velocity, you could travel to the Moon and back in 15 minutes.
This color-composite image was assembled from separate exposures through red, green, and blue filters, which capture the glow of ionized oxygen.
Because the gaseous knots are moving at different speeds from the supernova explosion, the fastest ones are colored blue and the slowest knots, colored red, in this composition.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, John Banovetz (Purdue University), Danny Milisavljevic (Purdue University)
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-002?...
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Astronomers used the Hubble Space telescope to revisit one of its most iconic subjects, the so-called "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula (M16). Three towers of gas and dust, standing light-years tall, are giving birth to new stars, buried within their dusty spires.
The pillars became famous after Hubble first imaged them in 1995 using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The features were observed again in late 2014 with that instrument's more advanced replacement, the Wide Field Camera 3. With its higher resolution, the new camera provides a sharper view of the pillars and also presents a wider vista, showing the base of the pillars and more of the region surrounding them.
In addition, the new observations captured a portrait of the pillars in infrared light, as well as in visible light. The longer wavelengths of infrared light pass more easily through the dusty environs, allowing us to see more of the wispy details and the stars normally hidden inside or behind the pillars when viewed in visible light.
By comparing Hubble's original image of the pillars to the new one, astronomers also noticed changes in a jet-like feature shooting away from one of the newborn stars within the pillars. The jet grew 60 billion miles longer in the time between observations, suggesting material in the jet was traveling at a speed of about 450,000 miles per hour.
Such observations of the details and changes in the pillars of the Eagle Nebula, and of observations near and far throughout the universe, have been made possible by Hubble’s viewpoint beyond Earth's atmosphere, by its technical upgrades over the years, and the longevity of its career.
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Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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Tags: Hubble Space Telescope Nebula Hubble Space Telescope pillars of creation infrared light M16 emission nebulae Astronomical Hubble Telescope Eagle Nebula Messier 16 star formation region Serpens dusty spires stellar jet astronomy space NASA