Recent images made with the Wide Field/Planetary Camera on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the structure of a thin sheet of gas located at the edge of the famous "Great Nebula" in Orion, an estimated 1500 light years from Earth. Astronomers, who compare the appearance of this sheet of gas with that of a rippled window curtain, report that this emission traces the boundary between the hot, diffuse interior of the nebula and an adjacent dense cool cloud. The sheet is seen in light emitted by atoms of gaseous sulfur (shown in red in the photograph). This emission is strongest under conditions which are intermediate between those in the interior of nebula and those in the dense cloud. The sulfur emission is seen to break into filamentary and clumpy structures with sizes down to the limit of what the telescope can show. In contrast, emission from gaseous oxygen and hydrogen (shown as blue and green, respectively) is favored in the interior of the nebula itself, and is distributed much more smoothly in the image. The Orion Nebula is a "stellar nursery" - a region where new stars are forming out of interstellar gas. The emission from the nebula is powered by the intense ultraviolet light from a cluster of particularly hot and luminous stars. The sulfur emission seen in the photograph is coming from the region where the light from these stars is "boiling off" material from the face of the dense cloud. This is the very cloud from which the hot stars formed, and is known to harbor additional ongoing star formation. Astronomers say that this is a good example of a case where, despite the spherical aberration that has hobbled many of the scientific programs which the Hubble Space Telescope was expected to carry out, the telescope can still be used to obtain scientifically interesting data with clarity far exceeding that normally possible from the ground. The Wide Field/Planetary Camera was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology.
Credits
Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI| About The Object | |
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| Object Name | Orion Nebula, M42, NGC 1976 |
| R.A. Position | 05h 35m 17.29s |
| Dec. Position | -5° 23' 27.99" |
| About The Object | |
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| 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. |
