Hooded in the mist

Credit: Euro­pean Space Agency, NASA, and J. Hes­ter (Ari­zona State University)

This neb­ula is known as the Omega or Swan Neb­ula but look close. Can you see the hooded fig­ure in the mist?

The Omega Neb­ula, or M17, is an area rag­ing with gas and dust. It is a per­fect place to make stars. Glow­ing hydro­gen, oxy­gen and sul­fur gas make up this mas­sive and bright neb­ula. NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope peered into this sea of dust show­ing how ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion com­ing from young, mas­sive stars are sculpt­ing the neb­ula around them. Wave-like pat­terns of gas, glow­ing red, in the cen­ter of the image are being warmed by the ultra­vi­o­let light. UV light also causes the atoms in the gas to move quicker and to glow. The heat and light cause some of the gas to stream away into space. Look for the green­ish and bluish gas near the top of the image. The bluish gas is oxy­gen and the green­ish gas hydro­gen. This hot­ter gas cre­ates a mist that hides back­ground struc­ture in the neb­ula. The UV light also clumps up the gas in the wave tops and com­presses it. Even­tu­ally solar wind from the hot stars may push enough mate­r­ial into the wave tops to cause new stars to light up the nebula.

M17 is found about 5,500 light-years away toward the con­stel­la­tion Sagit­tar­ius, the cen­taur. If we started on one side of this huge neb­ula, it would take 3 years trav­el­ing at the speed of light to reach the other side of the image.