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Nebulae and Gas Clouds
Inner Region of Dusty Nebula  Using an infrared camera has penetrated dust layers in a star-forming cloud to uncover a dense, craggy edifice of dust and gas. The Cone Nebula (NGC 2264), so named because it has a conical shape. The human eye cannot see infrared light so colors have been assigned to correspond to near-infrared wavelengths. The blue light represents shorter wavelengths and the red light corresponds to longer wavelengths. Hotbed of Star Formation  A watercolor fantasyland? No. It's actually a photograph of the center of the Swan Nebula, or M17, a hotbed of newly born stars wrapped in colorful blankets of glowing gas and cradled in an enormous cold, dark hydrogen cloud. Like its famous cousin in Orion, the Swan Nebula is illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars - each about six times hotter and 30 times more massive than the Sun. The powerful radiation from these stars evaporates and erodes the dense cloud of cold gas within which the stars formed. The blistered walls of the hollow cloud shine primarily in the blue, green, and red light emitted by excited atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur. Particularly striking is the rose-like feature, seen to the right of center, which glows in the red light emitted by hydrogen and sulphur. The Eskimo Nebula  Designated NGC 2392, it is dubbed the 'Eskimo Nebula' because, as seen through ground-based telescopes, it resembles a face inside a furry parka. In Hubble's sharp view the 'furry' features resemble giant comets all radially pointing away from the central star, like the spokes of a wheel.
Demise in ice and fire  The Bug Nebula, NGC 6302, is one of the brightest and most extreme planetary nebulae known. At its center lies a superhot, dying star smothered in a blanket of hailstones. Close-up on N11B  This is a ground-based view of the N11B in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The image spans a square of one degree and was constructed from two images from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 taken through infrared and red filters (shown as blue and red respectively). An Expanding Bubble in Space  Astronomers, using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope in October and November 1997 and April 1999, imaged the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) with unprecedented clarity. For the first time, they are able to understand the geometry and dynamics of this very complicated system. Earlier pictures taken of the nebula with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 1 left many issues unanswered, as the data could not be fully calibrated for scientific use. In addition, those data never imaged the enigmatic inner structure presented here.
The Helix Nebula  A detail from the Helix Nebula. The Helix Nebula  A detail from the Helix Nebula. The Helix Nebula  A detail from the Helix Nebula.
The Helix Nebula  A detail from the Helix Nebula. A Reflection Nebula in Orion  NGC 1999 is an example of a reflection nebula. Like fog around a street lamp, a reflection nebula shines only because the light from an embedded source illuminates its dust; the nebula does not emit any visible light of its own. NGC 1999 lies close to the famous Orion Nebula, about 1,500 light-years from Earth, in a region of our Milky Way galaxy where new stars are being formed actively. The nebula is famous in astronomical history because the first Herbig-Haro object was discovered immediately adjacent to it. Herbig-Haro objects are now known to be jets of gas ejected from very young stars. Peering into the Heart of the Crab Nebula  In the year 1054 A.D., Chinese astronomers were startled by the appearance of a new star, so bright that it was visible in broad daylight for several weeks. Today, the Crab Nebula is visible at the site of that bright star.
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