Photo: NASA
The NASA Hubble Telescope continues to blow our minds by providing images of the great unknown surrounding Earth. It’s helped us understand where our home exists in the infinity of celestial bodies out there. Today, NASA shared a new image of a small section of the Carina Nebula, one of Hubble’s most-imaged objects.
Code name NGC 3372, the Carina Nebula is an immense gas and dust cloud containing enormous bright stars; some are 50 to 100 times the mass of the Sun. It’s an emission nebula; the term refers to the fact that radiation from the stars ionizes the gas and makes it glow. The gas spans across a large area, making it a diffuse nebula.
Stars form and produce ultraviolet radiation. The stellar winds disperse the gas and dust around them and form dark cloaks. This phenomenon also creates empty patches where the stars become clearly visible.
The Hubble telescope uses infrared light imaging to detect longer wavelengths of light not dispersed by the dust and gas around the stars. Due to Carina Nebula’s size, which is around 300 light-years, the telescope only managed to capture a small section of the entire nebula. Astronomers study these pictures and compile the data from other images to comprehend its composition and structure.
If you wish to see it yourself, you can do so from the Earth’s southern hemisphere, where it’s visible with the naked eye. The nebula sits about 7,500 light-years away from Earth, in the southern constellation Carina, the Keel. It has changed nicknames in the last few hundred years, some of which are the Grand Nebula or the Eta Carinae Nebula for the bright star at its heart. We became aware of its presence in 1752 when Nicolas Louis de Lacaille discovered it from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.
Stars form and produce ultraviolet radiation. The stellar winds disperse the gas and dust around them and form dark cloaks. This phenomenon also creates empty patches where the stars become clearly visible.
The Hubble telescope uses infrared light imaging to detect longer wavelengths of light not dispersed by the dust and gas around the stars. Due to Carina Nebula’s size, which is around 300 light-years, the telescope only managed to capture a small section of the entire nebula. Astronomers study these pictures and compile the data from other images to comprehend its composition and structure.
If you wish to see it yourself, you can do so from the Earth’s southern hemisphere, where it’s visible with the naked eye. The nebula sits about 7,500 light-years away from Earth, in the southern constellation Carina, the Keel. It has changed nicknames in the last few hundred years, some of which are the Grand Nebula or the Eta Carinae Nebula for the bright star at its heart. We became aware of its presence in 1752 when Nicolas Louis de Lacaille discovered it from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.
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