ionized hydrogen Archives

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024 by Evan Gough

It Takes Very Special Conditions to Create This Bizarre Stellar Spectacle

A binary star system called R Aquarii undergoes violent eruptions that blast out huge filaments of glowing gas in this Hubble Space Telescope image. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Matthias Stute , Margarita Karovska , Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Hubble)

A stellar odd couple 700 light-years away is creating a chaotically beautiful display of colourful, gaseous filaments. The Hubble captured the pair, named R Aquarii, and their symbiotic interactions. Every 44 years the system’s violent eruptions blast out filaments of gas at over 1.6 million kilometers per hour.

February 6, 2023February 6, 2023 by Evan Gough

Hubble’s New View of the Tarantula Nebula

A snapshot of the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is the most recent Picture of the Week from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, E. Sabbi; Acknowledgment: Y. -H. Chu

The Tarantula Nebula, also called 30 Doradus, is the brightest star-forming region in our part of the galaxy. It’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and contains the most massive and hottest stars we know of. The Tarantula Nebula has been a repeat target for the Hubble since the telescope’s early years.

July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Evan Gough

Astronomers See Through the Milky Way’s Dust to Track Where Radiation is Coming From at the Center of the Galaxy

The core of the Milky Way. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech)

The center of our very own galaxy might be one of the Universe’s most mysterious places. Astronomers have to probe through thick dust to see what’s going on there. All that dust makes life difficult for astronomers who are trying to understand all the radiation in the center of the Milky Way, and what exactly its source is.

A new study based on 20 years of data—and a hydrogen bubble where there shouldn’t be one—is helping astronomers understand all that energy.

February 8, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A Cosmic Seagull’s Star-Studded Wings

Bright stars and vast clouds of dust and gas illuminate the “wings” of the Seagull Nebula (ESO)

These glowing red clouds are just a small part of the wings of an enormous bird — the Seagull Nebula, a band of gas and dust 3,400 light-years away that shines from UV light radiating from hot newborn stars.

This image was made from observations with the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile. See the full wide-field view of the Seagull Nebula below.

Wide-field view of the Seagull Nebula. The white box is the area seen at top. North is up in this view. (ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin)

The Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) is a vaguely bird-shaped region of gas and dust clouds located between the constellations Canis Major and Monoceros. The detail image at the top of this article is located along the upper edge of the gull’s lower wing, and is separately cataloged as Sharpless 2-296.

The bright red glow is the result of ionized hydrogen energized by the radiation from the several hot, bright young stars seen in the image. H II regions like the Seagull Nebula are signs of ongoing star formation in a galaxy — in a spiral galaxy like our Milky Way, these dust clouds are scattered throughout the arms. In fact, it was observations of such nebulae in the 1950s by Stewart Sharpless that helped determine the spiral structure of the Galaxy.

The silhouettes of dark, dense clouds closer to Earth block the red hydrogen glow from more distant areas of Sharpless 2-296.