NASA's Hubble Space Telescope presents a festive holiday greeting that's out of this world. The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched "wings" of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium.
Sharpless 2-106, Sh2-106 or S106 for short, lies nearly 2,000 light-years from us. The nebula measures several light-years in length. It appears in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy.
A massive, young star, IRS 4 (Infrared Source 4), is responsible for the furious activity we see in the nebula. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the "wings" of our angel.
A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an "hourglass" shape. Hubble's sharp resolution reveals ripples and ridges in the gas as it interacts with the cooler interstellar medium.
Dusky red veins surround the blue emission from the nebula. The faint light emanating from the central star reflects off of tiny dust particles. This illuminates the environment around the star, showing darker filaments of dust winding beneath the blue lobes.
Detailed studies of the nebula have also uncovered several hundred brown dwarfs. At purely infrared wavelengths, more than 600 of these sub-stellar objects appear. These "failed" stars weigh less than a tenth of our Sun. Because of their low mass, they cannot produce sustained energy through nuclear fusion like our Sun does. They encompass the nebula in a small cluster.
The Hubble images were taken in February 2011 with the Wide Field Camera 3. Visible narrow-band filters that isolate the hydrogen gas were combined with near-infrared filters that show structure in the cooler gas and dust.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | S106, Sh2-106, Sharpless 2-106 |
| Object Description | Star-Forming Region |
| R.A. Position | 20h 27m 27.09s |
| Dec. Position | 37° 22' 39.0" |
| Constellation | Cygnus |
| Distance | About 2000 light-years (600 parsecs) |
| Dimensions | The image is 2.9 arcminutes (1.7 light-years or 0.5 parsec) wide. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from proposal : K. Noll, Z. Levay, M. Livio, H. Bond, C. Christian, L. Frattare, M. Mutchler, and T. Borders (Hubble Heritage Team/STScI). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS and HST>WFC3/IR |
| Exposure Dates | February 12-13, 2011, Exposure Time: 1.3 hours |
| Filters | WFC3/UVIS: F657N (H-alpha) WFC3/IR: F110W (J) and F160W (H) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3 instrument on HST. Several filters were used to sample broad and narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Red: F160W (H) Cyan: F110W (J) Blue: F657N (H-alpha) |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
