kenobi-wan-obi:Hubble Telescope Spies Amazing Star Factory Inside Monkey Head NebulaNASA’s Hubble Sp
kenobi-wan-obi:Hubble Telescope Spies Amazing Star Factory Inside Monkey Head NebulaNASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured an amazing view of a distant starbirth factory, a nebula known as the “Monkey Head,” to help celebrate the upcoming 24th anniversary of the iconic instrument’s launch.The new infrared mosaic from Hubble — which launched on April 24, 1990 — shows knotty curls of dust and gas in the Monkey Head Nebula, a star-forming region that lies about 6,400 light-years away from Earth and is also known as NGC 2174 and Sharpless Sh2-252. Scientists used the Hubble mosaic to create a spectacular video of the Monkey Head Nebula to explain the new cosmic views.“Massive, newly formed stars near the center of the nebula (and toward the right in this image) are blasting away at dust within the nebula,” Hubble officials wrote in a description of the image, which was captured in February and released on Monday (March 17). You can see more Monkey Head Nebula views here, along with other Hubble Space Telescope images.“Ultraviolet light from these bright stars helps carve the dust into giant pillars. The nebula is mostly composed of hydrogen gas, which becomes ionized by the ultraviolet radiation,” they added. “As the interstellar dust particles are warmed from the radiation from the stars in the center of the nebula, they heat up and begin to glow at infrared wavelengths.” -- source link