Friday, April 26, 2024
Hubble Celebrates 34th Anniversary with a Look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula - UNIVERSE
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA's legendary Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Messier 76, M76, or NGC 650/651) located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The photogenic nebula is a favorite target of amateur astronomers.
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch
of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the
Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400
light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The name
'Little Dumbbell' comes from its shape that is a two-lobed structure of
colorful, mottled, glowing gases resembling a balloon that’s been pinched
around a middle waist. Like an inflating balloon, the lobes are expanding into
space from a dying star seen as a white dot in the center. Blistering
ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to glow. The
red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen.
NASA, ESA, STScI
M76 is classified as a planetary
nebula, an expanding shell of glowing gases that were ejected from a dying red
giant star. The star eventually collapses to an ultra-dense and hot white
dwarf. A planetary nebula is unrelated to planets, but have that name because
astronomers in the 1700s using low-power telescopes thought this type of object
resembled a planet.
M76 is composed of a ring, seen
edge-on as the central bar structure, and two lobes on either opening of the
ring. Before the star burned out, it ejected the ring of gas and dust. The ring
was probably sculpted by the effects of the star that once had a binary
companion star. This sloughed off material created a thick disk of dust and gas
along the plane of the companion's orbit. The hypothetical companion star isn't
seen in the Hubble image, and so it could have been later swallowed by the
central star. The disk would be forensic evidence for that stellar cannibalism.
The primary star is collapsing to
form a white dwarf. It is one of the hottest stellar remnants known at a
scorching 250,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 24 times our Sun's surface temperature.
The sizzling white dwarf can be seen as a pinpoint in the center of the
nebula. A star visible in projection beneath it is not part of the nebula.
Pinched off by the disk, two lobes
of hot gas are escaping from the top and bottom of the "belt," along
the star's rotation axis that is perpendicular to the disk. They are being
propelled by the hurricane-like outflow of material from the dying star,
tearing across space at two million miles per hour. That's fast enough to
travel from Earth to the Moon in a little over seven minutes! This torrential
"stellar wind" is plowing into cooler, slower-moving gas that was
ejected at an earlier stage in the star's life, when it was a red giant.
Ferocious ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to
glow. The red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen.
Given our solar system is 4.6
billion years old, the entire nebula is a flash in the pan by cosmological
timekeeping. It will vanish in about 15,000 years.
Hubble's Star Trekking
Since its launch in 1990 Hubble has
made 1.6 million observations of over 53,000 astronomical objects. To date,
the Mikulski
Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore, Maryland holds 184 terabytes of processed data that is science-ready
for astronomers around the world to use for research and analysis. Since 1990,
44,000 science papers have been published from Hubble observations. The space
telescope is the most scientifically productive space astrophysics mission in
NASA history. The demand for using Hubble is so high it is currently
oversubscribed by a factor of six-to-one.
Most of Hubble's discoveries were
not anticipated before launch, such as supermassive black holes, the
atmospheres of exoplanets, gravitational lensing by dark matter, the presence
of dark energy, and the abundance of planet formation among stars.
Hubble will continue research in
those domains and capitalize on its unique ultraviolet-light capability on such
topics as solar system phenomena, supernovae outbursts, composition of
exoplanet atmospheres, and dynamic emission from galaxies. And Hubble investigations
continue to benefit from its long baseline of observations of solar system
objects, stellar variable phenomena and other exotic astrophysics of the
cosmos.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope was designed to be meant to be complementary to Hubble, and not a substitute. Future Hubble research also will take advantage of the opportunity for synergies with Webb, which observes the universe in infrared light. The combined wavelength coverage of the two space telescopes expands on groundbreaking research in such areas as protostellar disks, exoplanet composition, unusual supernovae, cores of galaxies and chemistry of the distant universe.
Hubble’s Senior Project Scientist Dr. Jennifer Wiseman
takes us on a tour of this stunning new image, describes the telescope's
current health, and summarizes some of Hubble's contributions to astronomy
during its 34-year career.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Source: Hubble Celebrates 34th Anniversary with a Look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula - NASA Science
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)