Reflection nebula5/29/2023 ![]() As gas falls into the young protostar, it creates shocks on its surface that radiate energy. Instead, its light comes from radiation surface shocks. As a protostar, it hasn’t gathered enough mass to trigger the nuclear fusion that takes place in older stars. HD 97300 is a young, massive star that hasn’t entered the Main Sequence yet. A star named HD 97300 provides the light. The Running Man Nebula is sometimes called the Ghost Nebula because its shape resembles that of a cartoon ghost. A reflection nebula is a nebula produced when starlight reflects from very small dust particles floating in the interstellar medium, resulting in a bluish glow. ![]() (astronomy) A nebula that consists of dust which reflects starlight and appears blue in. IC 2631 is a reflection nebula about 500 light-years away in a giant star-forming region called the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex. The reflection nebulae NGC 1973, NGC 1975 and NGC 1977 are associated with the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a vast star-forming region that stretches across most of the constellation Orion. reflection nebula (plural reflection nebulas or reflection nebulae). Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and ESO Processing Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) Usually caused by a pairing of two key things: stars and nearby dust, reflection nebula are most frequently blue in. Hubble observed a small part of IC2631 in a survey looking at the disks of newly-formed stars.Ĭredits: NASA, ESA, K. In 1912, American astronomer Vesto Slipher understood that light from a nearby star lights nebulae up rather than some intrinsic characteristic of the nebula itself. They even called galaxies nebulae.Īs time went on and telescopes and observations improved, they figured more things out. The word nebula means ‘cloud’ or ‘fog’ in Latin, so early astronomers called anything that appeared cloud-like a nebula. The Herschel discovery was made in 2010.In the early days of astronomy, astronomers weren’t certain what they saw when they spotted a nebula. This image was first published on the Hubble site in March 2000. This is the signature of a ‘reflection nebula’ – this one is known as NGC 1999. This bright material in the area pictured here is only visible because of the light from the star it does not emit any visible light of its own. The star is so young that it is still surrounded by a cloud of material left over from its formation. It appears white owing to its high surface temperature of about 10 000✬ – nearly twice that of the Sun. The radiation of this star is also slowly causing the nebula to dissipate. Both effects are caused by the gigantic star Gamma Cassiopeiae. The bright star seen here is V380 Orionis, a young star 3.5 times the mass of our own Sun. The nebula is classified as both a reflection nebula as it is reflecting the light of a nearby star and as an emission nebula as it releases hydrogen-alpha radiation. The powerful radiation from a nearby mature star may also have helped to clear the hole. In general, such globules are known to be small cocoons of forming stars, but thanks to ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, which would have been able to see any hints of star formation at infrared wavelengths but did not, along with ground-based observations, it turned out to be a truly empty patch of sky.Īstronomers think that is was formed when jets of gas from some of the young stars in the wider region punctured the sheet of dust and gas that forms the surrounding nebula. When the dark patch was first imaged, it was assumed to be a very cold, dense cloud of gas and dust, so thick as to be totally opaque in visible light, and blocking all light behind it. While the ‘fog’ is dust and gas lit up by the star, the ‘hole’ really is an empty patch of sky. This spooky sight, imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, resembles fog lit by a streetlamp swirling around a curiously shaped hole – and there is some truth in that.
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