A unique peanut-shaped cocoon of dust, called a reflection nebula, surrounds a cluster of young, hot stars in this view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The "double bubble," called N30B, is inside a larger nebula. The larger nebula, called DEM L 106, is embedded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way lying 160,000 light-years away. The wispy filaments of DEM L 106 fill much of the image. Hubble captures the glow of fluorescing hydrogen and sulfur, as well as the brilliant blue-white colors of the hot stars.
The very bright star at the top of the picture, called Henize S22, illuminates the dusty cocoon like a flashlight shining on smoke particles. This searing supergiant star is only 25 light-years from the N30B nebula. Viewed from N30B, the brilliant star would appear 250 times as bright as the planet Venus does in Earth's sky.
Lowell Observatory astronomer M.S. Oey and University of Illinois astronomer Y.-H. Chu are members of a science team studying DEM L 106. Along with their collaborators, Oey and Chu have made a clever use of the reflection nebula around N30B. By obtaining spectroscopic observations at various points across the nebula, they can study the spectrum of S22 from different angles. Remarkably, they have found that the star's spectrum changes with the viewing angle, suggesting that the star is surrounded by a flattened disk of gas expelled from its equator.
Astronomers R. Davies, K. Elliot, and J. Meaburn, who created the "DEM" catalogs of both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, originally cataloged DEM L 106 in the 1970's. N30B was discovered in the 1950s by astronomer K. Henize, who later became a NASA astronaut.
DEM L 106 was imaged with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Hubble data taken in 1998 were combined with data taken by the Hubble Heritage Team in late 2001.
Credits
NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);Acknowledgment: M.S. Oey (Lowell Observatory) and Y.-H. Chu (U. of Illinois)
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | DEM L 106, N30B |
| Object Description | H II Region and Reflection Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) |
| R.A. Position | 05h 13m 52.09s |
| Dec. Position | -67° 27' 6.99" |
| Constellation | Dorado |
| Distance | The distance to the LMC is roughly 160,000 light-years (50 kpc). |
| Dimensions | The image is 1.25 arcminutes wide. At the distance of the LMC, this corresponds to 59 light-years (18 parsecs). |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Principal Astronomers: M.S. Oey (Lowell Obs.), J. English (U. Manitoba) and The Hubble Heritage Team: K. Noll, H. Bond, C. Christian, L. Frattare, F. Hamilton, Z. Levay, and T. Royle (STScI) Y.-H. Chu and C.-H. Chen (U. Illinois), C. Danforth (JHU), B. Dunne and R. Gruendl (U. Illinois), Y. Naze (Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Belgium), and S. Points (Northwestern U.) |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 |
| Exposure Dates | November 14, 1998 and October 18, 2001, Exposure Time: 1.7 hours |
| Filters | F439W (B), F555W (V), F656N (H-alpha), F673N ([S II]), F814W (I) |
| About The Image | |
| 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. |
