Posts Tagged ‘Hubble’
Anthill
Image Credit: NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Lab) and B. Balick (University of Washington)
The Hubble Space Telescope shows us another example of how our Sun might die in 5 billion years. The “Ant Nebula, ” or Menzel 3, shows two glowing bubbles coming out from the dying star. Astronomers are most curious about the equal shape of the bubble on either side of the star. This symmetry offers scientists a chance to come up with many different ideas on the cause.
Astral “J”
Credit: NASA, ESA and K. Cook (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA)
What looks like a astral “J” is a combined view from NASA’s Hubble, Chandra and NRAO’s Very Large Array showing a galaxy cluster called M3735.6+7421 bound together by gravity.
Twisting Butterfly
Credit: A. Caulet (ST-ECF, ESA) and NASA
Twisting in space we find a starry butterfly. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Lagoon Nebula, or M8. But in the center of the swirling, twister-like nebula, there seems to be a glowing yellow butterfly. This bright area is also called the Hourglass.
The twisters within the Lagoon Nebula are similar to Earth tornadoes. Huge changes in temperature in the dust clouds combined with the solar winds from hot stars may cause the clouds to twist. If you explore the image a bit more, you can see little dark globs, called Bok globules, bow shocks around stars, rings and knots. The Lagoon Nebula and other similar nebula are places where stars are born.
The Lagoon Nebula lies about 5,000 light years away toward the constellation of Sagittarius.
Red Spiders
Credit: Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University) et al., HST, ESA, NASA
What a tangled web. The Red Spider Nebula, caught in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, is a two-lobed planetary nebula. Also called butterfly nebulas, these planetary nebula are what remains when a normal, Sun-like star reaches the end of its life. What is left becomes a white dwarf. The Red Spider Nebula, also called NGC 6537, houses one of the hottest white dwarfs astronomers have seen. The nebula is created when gas and dust blown out from the star, called a solar wind, collide with the walls of the nebula. The walls of the nebula aren’t moving as fast. When the two collide, the atoms in the cloud begin to glow. As for the strange shape, stars at the final stage of their life throw off gas and star material in waves and in all different directions.
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The ancient peoples saw pictures in the sky. From those patterns in the heavens, ancient storytellers created legends about heroes, maidens, dragons, bears, centaurs, dogs and mythical creatures…Read More
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