Todays pic is one that is posted just because it's different and beautiful .
Double Bubble
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.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: M.S. Oey (Lowell Observatory) and Y.-H. Chu (U. of Illinois)
Rather than the one single larger pic, this is one of those where you can find the page that this picture and article are from here. This page has a full article and several different sized larger pictures, the pictures however are given as links so there is no problem for those limited to 56K.
Previous Pic Of The Day posts
19th Mar 03Courtesy of Mark G
18th Mar 03
17th Mar 03
16th Mar 03
15th Mar 03
14th Mar 03
13th Mar 03
Double Bubble
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.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: M.S. Oey (Lowell Observatory) and Y.-H. Chu (U. of Illinois)
Rather than the one single larger pic, this is one of those where you can find the page that this picture and article are from here. This page has a full article and several different sized larger pictures, the pictures however are given as links so there is no problem for those limited to 56K.
Previous Pic Of The Day posts
19th Mar 03Courtesy of Mark G
18th Mar 03
17th Mar 03
16th Mar 03
15th Mar 03
14th Mar 03
13th Mar 03
