A NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of a turbulent cauldron of starbirth, called N159, taking place 170,000 light-years away in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Torrential stellar winds from hot newborn massive stars within the nebula sculpt ridges, arcs, and filaments in the vast cloud, which is over 150 light-years across.
A rare type of compact ionized "blob" is resolved for the first time to be a butterfly-shaped or "Papillon" (French for "butterfly") nebula, buried in the center of the maelstrom of glowing gases and dark dust. The unprecedented details of the structure of the Papillon, itself less than 2 light-years in size (about 2 arcseconds in the sky), are seen in the inset.
A possible explanation of this bipolar shape is the outflow of gas from massive stars (over 10 times the mass of our sun) hidden in the central absorption zone. Such stars are so hot that their radiation pressure halts the infall of gas and directs it away from the stars in two opposite directions. Presumably, a dense equatorial disk formed by matter still trying to fall in onto the stars focuses the outstreaming matter into the bipolar directions.
This observation is part of a search for young massive stars in the LMC. Rare are the cases where we can see massive stars so early after their birth.
The red in this true-color image is from the emission of hydrogen and the yellow from high excitation ionized oxygen. The picture was taken on September 5, 1998 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.
The Hubble observations of the Papillon nebula were conducted by the European astronomers Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Paris Observatory, France) and co-investigators Michael Rosa (Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility, European Southern Observatory, Germany), Vassilis Charmandaris (Paris Observatory), Lise Deharveng (Marseille Observatory, France), and Hans Zinnecker (Astrophysical Institute, Potsdam, Germany).
Their work is submitted for publication in the European journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Credits
M. Heydari-Malayeri (Paris Observatory) and NASA/ESA| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | N159 |
| R.A. Position | 05h 39m 38.99s |
| Dec. Position | -69° 44' 35.99" |
| 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 |
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| 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. |
