Yesterday, NASA revealed a number of spectacular photos taken by Hubble's new instruments. Soon an interview with Prof. Mario Livio about the space telescope
The celestial object that looks like a delicate butterfly is not as calm as the butterflies on earth. This is a boiling cauldron of gas that heats up to a temperature of about twenty thousand degrees Celsius. The gas is ejected into space at a speed of over a million km/h - enough to reach the Earth from the Moon in 24 minutes.
A dead star that was once 5 times the mass of the sun is now at the center of the madness. It has shed its gaseous mantle and now emits a stream of ultraviolet radiation that causes materials to glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so called because many of them are round and resemble a planet when viewed through small telescopes.
Wide Field Camera #3, the Hubble Space Telescope's new camera captured the image of the planetary nebula known as NGC 6302 but better known as the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. The camera was installed by the astronauts on the last upgrade mission of the 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009.
NGC 6302 is within our own Milky Way, about 3,800 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the upper gas layer of the star that was shed from it about 2,200 years ago. The 'butterfly' stretches to a distance of over two light years, about halfway between the Sun and the nearest star Alpha Centauri.
It is impossible to see the central star because it is hidden inside a ring of dust in the shape of a hoe, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula at its center. The thick dust belt compresses the outflowing material and causes the bipolar configuration seen in some planetary nebulae.
The surface temperature of the star is estimated at about 220 thousand degrees Celsius, which makes it one of the hottest known stars in our galaxy. Spectrometric observations from ground-based telescopes show that the temperature of this gas is about 20,000 degrees Celsius, very hot compared to a typical planetary nebula.
Planetary Camera #3 reveals the complex history of emissions from the star. Initially the star evolved into an extremely large red giant with a diameter a thousand times that of the Sun. He then lost the top layer. Some of the gas was ejected from the equator at a relatively low speed of about 32 km/h and created the ring shaped like a mole. Other gas was ejected perpendicular to the ring at high speed and formed the expanding wings of the butterfly-shaped structure. Later when the central star warmed up, a much faster solar wind, a stream of ionized particles flying at over 3 million km/h cut through the existing configuration of the wings, refining the shape even more.
The image also shows a large number of finger-like gas pointing back toward the star, indicating denser bubbles in the gas stream resisting the pressure of the solar wind.
The outer layers of the nebula are larger due to the light emitted from the nitrogen, indicating the presence of colder gas in the image. Planetary Camera #3 is equipped with a wide variety of filters that isolate the light emitted from several chemical elements, allowing astronomers to build a profile of the gas in the nebula, such as its temperature, density and composition.
The areas in white are those where the light is emitted from sulfur. These are areas where fast moving gas has taken over and collided with slow gas emitted by the star in earlier stages, creating shock waves within the gas (the edges in bright white on the side facing the center of the star). The crisp-edged white bubble in the upper right of the image is an example of one of these shock waves.
The nebula was photographed on July 27, 2009 by Hubble's Planetary Camera No. 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters isolated the emissions of the elements oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur from the planetary nebula and from all of these the image was created.
The image was released on September 9 in the first wave of images from Planetary Camera #3, as announced at a press conference held by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland. Soon we are going to interview Prof. Mario Livio by phone. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section.
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It is not clear from the article, and it is possible that it is still unknown, what is the reason for the casting of the mantle on this planet.
This is probably not a supernova type star explosion but another mechanism, possibly the emission of material as a result of strong magnetic fields.
This may help explain the polar symmetry rather than spherical symmetry.
oak:
It's just a wording problem.
Most formulations in this field are confusing because there is no consistent method for describing time.
In my opinion, it means that the shell was ejected from the star 2200 years before the situation we see today was created, therefore - to know when the shell was ejected, add 2200 to 3800
It is written in the article that the gas is from the mantle of the star that was emitted from it 2200 years ago, while it is stated that the distance of KDA from this nebula is 3800 light years, which means that everything we see from this nebula is at least 3800 years old. There is an unclear contradiction here.
The anonymous user is me - sorry.
will open:
Why are you talking about things you don't understand?
Yeftah,
Matter does not need to move at the speed of light to become energy - the speed of light is the "conversion gate" of mass to energy.
An atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb are examples of turning matter into energy, and as mentioned, matter does not move there at the speed of light.
Matter can indeed turn into energy when it moves at the speed of light, haven't you considered the fact that a million km/h is simply not close to the speed of light?
Chen T:
Definately not.
As I said - there is no such thing as "speed" just like that and no mass can reach the speed of light itself in any reference system.
Hello Michael 🙂
Thanks for the quick response and I apologize for the ignorance,
But didn't Einstein claim that at the speed of light all matter turns into energy?
Chen T:
Nothing is converted into energy as a result of rapid motion.
This contradicts the whole idea that movement is a relative thing (a million km/h relative to what?)
I meant that matter returns to its original form after slowing down to a speed lower than the speed of light.
At a speed of a million kilometers per hour, isn't everything supposed to turn into energy, according to Einstein? And if so, do all the molecules return to their previous order and the matter takes on its previous form and nature, unchanged?
Eyal:
Adam's answer is correct.
It is a body with rotational symmetry that is shaped like an hourglass.
The truth is that the rotation of the star should not have caused the nebula to be cylindrical because it was completely ineffective at the moment of the explosion and the expected symmetry was rather spherical.
What prevented the development of spherical symmetry (and neutralized the development of the sphere in the regions close to the star's equator) is apparently an extremely dense ring of dust and gas that surrounds it in the equatorial region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_6302
I think it has rotational symmetry.
The axis of rotation in the picture is from right-top to left-bottom.
Each wing of the butterfly represents a pole of the star.
on the assumptions that:
1) All matter originates from a star.
2) All the forces acting on matter originate from the star (= in the center).
3) The star rotates on its axis quickly compared to the time required to shape the shape of the nebula.
With these assumptions it can be concluded that the nebula should have cylindrical symmetry.
But she doesn't. Such symmetry.
What's the explanation?
With thanks: Eyal.