Posts Tagged ‘Hubble’
The Crab
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)
In the year 1054, Japanese, Chinese and Native American astronomers recorded a violent event. They saw a star that hadn’t been there before. It turned out to be a supernova that formed the Crab Nebula and it’s one of the earliest recorded astronomical events by humans.
Ring around the eye
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)
One of the most famous of all planetary nebula, the Ring Nebula (M57) glows in our summer skies. This “eye in the sky” is the remains of another sun-like star. The central star has blown off layers of gas and dust to form a bubble in space. Clumps of dark material can be seen near the edges while the dying central star can be seen floating in the bluish hot gas. The image is close to the actual color of the nebula. The blue area represents hot gas while areas farther out become cooler and redder. This shows how the gas in the bubble glows because of ultraviolet radiation from the doomed central star. The surface temperature of the star is a whopping 216,000 degrees Fahrenheit (120,000 Celsius). Our Sun’s surface temperature is about 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,000 Celsius).
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.
Starry butterflies
Credit: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Vincent Icke (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Garrelt Mellema (Stockholm University), and NASA
Glowing in the night, this starry butterfly shows us pinwheel shapes, goblets and bright colors. The Hubble Space Telescope took this image in 1997. The picture of M2-9 gives us another idea of how our Sun might die in 5 billion years. The central star of this planetary nebula blows out stuff like the exhaust of a jet engine. Astronomers also call M2-9 the “Twin Jet Nebula.”
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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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By The Riviera Times
By CritterKeeper
By Sarah Q. Brett