Dr Dave
pillzlol
New light on nebulas
IF GOD had an eye, it would probably look like this.
Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have captured a striking image of the Helix Nebula, the closest planetary nebula to Earth, using the two-year-old VISTA telescope in Chile.
The infrared image shows areas of cold nebular gas, which is invisible in pictures taken in visible light, on a background of stars and galaxies.
When stars enter the last phase of their life they eject large amounts of highly charged gas which radiate to create a planetary nebula, so named because the bright discs displayed by many resemble the outer planets of the solar system, Uranus and Neptune.
With the outer layers of gas expelled all that remains is the star's dense core which appears as nothing more than a faint blue dot known as a white dwarf - the final evolutionary stage for almost all stars.
The Helix Nebula, nicknamed the "Eye of God", lies in the constellation of Aquarius and is about 700 light-years from Earth.
New images of another type of nebula, which incubate stars during their formative stages of development, have also been released this week.
The Eagle Nebula, a diffuse emission nebula found more than 6500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, was made famous more than 15-years ago when the Hubble Space Telescope captured its iconic "Pillars of Creation" image.
Now, two orbiting observatories run by the European Space Agency have snapped the nebula in far-infrared wavelengths revealing the pillars and the wide field of gas and dust around them.
The image has been super-imposed with a multi-energy X-ray image from the agency's XMM-Newton telescope revealing hot young stars inside the pillars, each several light years lon
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/new-light-on-nebulas-20120119-1q87n.html
Perhaps now we can find out if there's coffee in those nebulas.
