The image commemorating the 34th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope is the planetary nebula “M76” | sorae Portal site to space

This is the planetary nebula Messier 76 (M76), located approximately 3,400 light years away in the constellation Perseus. It is also sometimes called the “Little Dumbbell Nebula.” In the astronomical catalog “New General Catalog” published in 1888, they were listed as “NGC 650” and “NGC 651” because it was thought that they might be two nebulae in contact.

A planetary nebula is a celestial body that is thought to be formed during the evolution of a relatively light star (with a mass less than eight times that of the Sun) that does not explode as a supernova. When a star like the Sun evolves from a main sequence star to a red giant, gas and dust begin to be ejected from its outer layer to its surroundings. Eventually, when the star that has lost its gas reaches the stage where it changes from a red giant star to a white dwarf (central star), the ejected gas is ionized by the ultraviolet rays emitted by the central star and emits light, which is observed as a planetary nebula. It is said that it will become like this.

According to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in the United States, the bright band in the center of M76’s image is a ring-shaped structure seen from the side. This structure is made of gas and dust ejected from the central star, and is thought to have been shaped by interactions with the companion star. Although a white dwarf, which is an evolved form of the central star, can be seen in the center of the nebula, no celestial object that resembles a companion star has been found, suggesting that it may have been swallowed up by the central star.

On the left and right sides of the ring structure, lobes (protruding parts) of high-temperature gas emitted in both directions along the rotation axis of the central star are visible. The red color of the lobe corresponds to light emitted from nitrogen, and the blue color corresponds to light emitted from oxygen. The speed of the gas is approximately 2 million miles per hour (approximately 3.2 million kilometers per hour), which is the distance from the Earth to the moon, and it takes just over 7 minutes to pass.It is a cooler, slower-moving gas that was ejected when the central star was a red giant. It’s flowing into.

Planetary nebulae exist only for a moment in the long history of the universe. According to STScI, M76 is also expected to disappear in about 15,000 years.

This image was created based on data acquired by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and was created to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Published. Since its launch on April 24, 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, special astronomical images have been released to commemorate the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope at this time every year.

According to STScI, the Hubble Space Telescope has made 1.6 million observations of more than 53,000 celestial objects. A total of 184 terabytes of processed data are available for research, and 44,000 scientific papers have been published using this data. Many of the discoveries made by the Hubble Space Telescope were not predicted before launch, such as supermassive black holes, the atmospheres of exoplanets, the gravitational lensing effect of dark matter, and the formation of numerous planets outside the solar system. It is said that what was not used is now occupied.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which mainly observes visible light but also ultraviolet and infrared light, has a complementary relationship with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which specializes in infrared observations. It is hoped that the combination of observational data from the two telescopes will lead to groundbreaking research in fields such as the birth of stars and planets, the composition of extrasolar planets, rare types of supernovae, galactic nuclei, and the chemistry of the distant universe. It is being

The image at the beginning was released on April 23, 2024 by STScI, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope and Webb Space Telescope, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Source

• STScI – Hubble Celebrates 34th Anniversary with a Look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula
• NASA – Hubble Celebrates 34th Anniversary with a Look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula
• ESA/Hubble – Hubble celebrates 34th anniversary with a look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula

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