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NASA and The Hubble Heritage
Team (STScI/AURA)
Anchoring the Bubble Nebula
(NGC 7635) is a bright star, at left, which produces a wind of charged particles
that stream into the surrounding space at 4 million mph (7 million kilometers
per hour). The star is 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun. Its winds carve
the bubble-like shape out of surrounding gas and dust.
The nebula is somewhere
between 7,100 and 11,300 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. It
is about 10 light-years across, a region of space equal to more than twice the
distance from the Sun to the nearest star.
In the lower right of the
picture, a region of dense gas is buffeted by the stellar winds. The wind sculpts
the finger-like features and heats the gas until it glows. This data for this
picture was gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope clear back in 1992, and the
image was put
together and released in 1998. [Also,
see the bubble inside the bubble]
-- Robert
Roy Britt
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