Monkey Head Nebula Target For Hubble Space Telescopes 24th Anniversary

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), This portion of the Monkey Head Nebula was imaged in the infrared using Hubble'sWide Field Camera 3. Credit: ESA/Hubble

To celebrate its 24th year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released a beautiful new image of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. This colourful region is filled with young stars embedded within bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust. NGC 2174 lies about 6400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Hubble previously viewed this part of the sky back in 2001, creating a stunning image released in 2011, and the space telescope has now revisited the region to celebrate its 24th year of operation. Nebulae are a favourite target for Hubble. Their colourful plumes of gas and fiery bright stars create ethereally beautiful pictures. Some of the most famous of Hubble's images have been of nebulae — for example, the telescope's 22nd and 23rd anniversary images of the Tarantula (heic1206) and Horsehead (heic1307) nebulae, and its festive 2012 image of planetary nebula NGC 5189 (heic1220). In April of this year, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope will be celebrating 24 years of observing. To celebrate this milestone, the observatory is releasing a brand new image of part of NGC 2174, otherwise known as the Monkey Head nebula. This new Hubblecast episode showcases this beautiful image, which views a colourful region filled with young stars embedded within

Credit: ESA/Hubble

bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust. The nebula is a violent stellar nursery, packed with the ingredients needed for star formation. However, the recipe for cooking up new stars isn't very efficient and most of the ingredients are wasted as the cloud of gas and dust disperses. This process is accelerated by the presence of fiercely hot young stars which trigger high velocity winds that help to blow the gas outwards. This image, a composite of red and blue exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the region of sky surrounding NGC 2174, more popularly known as the Monkey Head Nebula. To celebrate its 24th year observing Hubble revisited the Monkey Head Nebula and a brand new image was released of one of its breathtaking pillars. The small square near the centre of this image is where the pillar can be found. A vibrant palette of colours can be seen  in this new image of NGC 2174. Dark brown and rust-coloured dust clouds billow outwards, framed against a background of bright blue gas. These striking hues are formed by combining several Hubble images taken with different coloured filters, to reveal a broad range of colours not normally visible to the human eye.

Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech

The icing on this cosmic birthday cake takes the form of young white and pink stars sprinkled amongst the glowing clouds, pushing away the dark stellar nurseries in which they formed. The key ingredient in NGC 2174 is hydrogen gas, which is ionised by the ultraviolet radiation emitted by the young stars. As a result, this region is also known as an HII region — a large cloud of ionised gas. This video sequence begins by zooming through the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), finishing on new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. NGC 2174 lies about 6400 light-years away. Hubble previously viewed this part of the sky back in 2011, and the space telescope has now revisited the region to celebrate its 24th year of operation. This image was created using infrared observations from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) 

This image marks 24 years of Hubble. This milestone will be further celebrated by a conference being held in Rome, Italy, in March of this year. The conference, entitled Science with the Hubble Space Telescope IV, will highlight and celebrate the scientific breakthroughs that Hubble has made over the last two decades and look into the future at the topics and key questions that will shape the field of astrophysics in the next decade. This video sequence pans across new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. NGC 2174 lies about 6400 light-years away. Hubble previously viewed this part of the sky back in 2011, and the space telescope has now revisited the region to celebrate its 24th year of operation. This image was created using infrared observations

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team(STScI/AURA) 

from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. This portion of the Monkey Head Nebula was imaged in the infrared using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Hubble's earlier Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 image from 2011 inspired its choice as the telescope's 24th anniversary image. A processed version of the WFPC2 dataset was entered into the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition by Yurij Tukachev. Contacts-sources: Georgia Bladon, ESA/Hubble, Public Information Officer. Source: Article

Read More........→August 11, 2014

WISE Feels the Heat from Orion's Sword

The Orion nebula is featured in this sweeping image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The nebula (also cataloged as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke. This metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks forming around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green. Astronomers now realize that the Orion nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame nebula. This complex in our Milky Way galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light. Color in this image represents specific infrared wavelengths. Blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron wavelengths and cyan (blue-green) represents 4.6 microns, both of which come mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, appear green and red. Green represents 12-micron light and red represents 22-micron light. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA, Note: For more information, see WISE Feels the Heat from Orion's Sword. Source: Minsex

Read More........→February 18, 2013