AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Red rectangle nebula structure12/13/2023 In 1994, Hubble first revealed NGC 6543's surprisingly intricate structures, including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas, and unusual shock-induced knots of gas.Īs if the Cat's Eye itself isn't spectacular enough, this new image taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) reveals the full beauty of a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. A planetary nebula forms when Sun-like stars gently eject their outer gaseous layers that form bright nebulae with amazing and confounding shapes. Though the Cat's Eye Nebula was one of the first planetary nebulae to be discovered, it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space. The nebula, formally cataloged NGC 6543, is every bit as inscrutable as the J.R.R. In this detailed view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the so-called Cat's Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings." Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) and Z. Our own Sun may eject a similar planetary nebula some 6 billion years from now.Ĭredit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Īcknowledgment: R. Eons from now, these particles may be incorporated into new stars and planets when they form from interstellar gas and dust. The dust particles are rich in elements such as carbon. The Hubble image also reveals a host of filaments, including one long one that resembles a waistband, made out of dust particles which have condensed out of the expanding gases. Red represents the coolest gas, at the outer edge. Blue represents the hottest gas, which is confined to the inner region of the nebula. In the Heritage Team's rendition of the Hubble image, the colors were chosen to represent the temperature of the gases. The brighter star is in an earlier stage of stellar evolution, but in the future it will probably eject its own planetary nebula. The flood of ultraviolet radiation from its surface makes the surrounding gases glow through fluorescence. This star is now smaller than our own Sun, but extremely hot. (A third, unrelated star lies near the edge of the nebula.) The faint partner is actually the star that has ejected the nebula. This image, captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, clearly shows two stars near the center of the nebula, a bright white one, and an adjacent, fainter companion to its upper right. The gases are expanding away from the central star at a speed of 9 miles per second. NGC 3132 is nearly half a light year in diameter, and at a distance of about 2000 light years is one of the nearer known planetary nebulae. In reality, these nebulae have little or nothing to do with planets, but are instead huge shells of gas ejected by stars as they near the ends of their lifetimes. The name "planetary nebula" refers only to the round shape that many of these objects show when examined through a small visual telescope. This expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star, is known to amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere as the "Eight-Burst" or the "Southern Ring" Nebula. NGC 3132 is a striking example of a planetary nebula. Credit: NASAĬredit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA) Hubble's ability to see very fine structural details (usually blurred beyond recognition in ground-based images) enables us to look for clues to this puzzle. A long-standing puzzle is how planetary nebulae acquire their complex shapes and symmetries, since red giants and the gas/dust clouds surrounding them are mostly round. When the red giant star has ejected all of its outer layers, the ultraviolet radiation from the exposed hot stellar core makes the surrounding cloud of matter created during the red giant phase glow: the object becomes a planetary nebula. Most of the carbon (the basis of life) and particulate matter (crucial building blocks of solar systems like ours) in the universe is manufactured and dispersed by red giant stars. When Sun-like stars get old, they become cooler and redder, increasing their sizes and energy output tremendously: they are called red giants.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |