In this unusual image, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare
A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope finds interesting things inside
an inflating, see-through space bubble.
The expanding cavity within a gaseous cloud is carved by radiation and an intense
wind of particles blowing off a hot young star. The star ejects 100 million
times more stuff than our Sun, hurling it outward at about 4 million miles per
hour (7 million kph) -- that's about 4 times faster than the speed of the solar
wind that races away from the Sun.
The transparent bubble is considered a nebula, and it is called N44F. The scene
is about 160,000 light-years away in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic
Cloud.
The interior wall of the bubble is lined with several finger-like columns of
cool gas and dust, each about 4 to 8 light-years long. Similar columns make
up the Pillars
of Creation in a famous Hubble image of the much closer Eagle Nebula. The
pillars in N44F point toward the central star and are illuminated by the star's
ultraviolet radiation.
The picture was taken in March 2002 and released today.
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA, ESA, Y. Nazé (University
of Liège, Belgium) and Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana)
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