Looking like a colorful holiday card, this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a vibrant green and red nebula far from Earth, where nature seems to have put on the traditional colors of the season. These colors, produced by the light emitted by oxygen and hydrogen, help astronomers investigate the star-forming processes in nebulas such as NGC 2080.
NGC 2080, nicknamed "The Ghost Head Nebula," is one of a chain of star-forming regions lying south of the 30 Doradus nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud that have attracted special attention. These regions have been studied in detail with Hubble and have long been identified as unique star-forming sites. 30 Doradus is the largest star-forming complex in the whole local group of galaxies.
The light from the nebula captured in this image is emitted by two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The red and the blue light are from regions of hydrogen gas heated by nearby stars. The green light on the left comes from glowing oxygen. The energy to illuminate the green light is supplied by a powerful stellar wind (a stream of high-speed particles) coming from a massive star just outside the image. The white region in the center is a combination of all three emissions and indicates a core of hot, massive stars in this star-formation region. The intense emission from these stars has carved a bowl-shaped cavity in the surrounding gas.
In the white region, the two bright areas (the "eyes of the ghost") -– named A1 (left) and A2 (right) – are very hot, glowing "blobs" of hydrogen and oxygen. The bubble in A1 is produced by the hot, intense radiation and powerful stellar wind from a single massive star. A2 has a more complex appearance due to the presence of more dust, and it contains several hidden, massive stars. The massive stars in A1 and A2 must have formed within the last 10,000 years, since their natal gas shrouds are not yet disrupted by the powerful radiation of the newly born stars.
The research team noted that Hubble's superb resolution is essential to see the various features in the nebula and to better understand the formation of massive stars in this interesting region.
This "enhanced color" picture is composed of three narrow-band-filter images obtained March 28, 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The colors are red (ionized hydrogen, H-alpha, 1040 seconds), green (ionized oxygen, 1200 seconds) and blue (ionized hydrogen, H-beta, 1040 seconds). The image spans 67 x 67 arc-seconds, corresponding to 55 x 55 light-years at the distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud (168,000 light-years).
Credits
NASA, ESA & Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | NGC 2080, The Ghost Head Nebula |
| Object Description | Star-forming Region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) |
| R.A. Position | 05h 39m 43.99s |
| Dec. Position | -69° 38' 48.0" |
| Constellation | Dorado |
| Distance | About 54.7 kpc (168,000 light-years) |
| Dimensions | The image is 67 arcseconds square. At the distance of the LMC, this corresponds to a physical scale of roughly 55 light-years square. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Principal Astronomers: M. Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France), V. Charmandaris (Cornell University), L. Deharveng (Observatoire de Marseille, France), F. Maynadier (Observatoire de Paris, France), M.R. Rosa (ST-ECF, Germany), D. Schaerer (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees, France) and H. Zinnecker (Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, Germany). |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 |
| Exposure Dates | March 28, 2000, Exposure Time: 0.9 hours |
| Filters | F487W (H-beta), F502W ([O III]), F656N (H-alpha) |
| 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. |
