The Hubble
Space Telescope (HST) catches a boomerang with this image of a cold and distant
nebula.
Hubble
turned its eye on the Boomerang Nebula, which sits some 5,000 light-years from
Earth in the constellation Centaurus, to capture this
view. With a temperature of about one degree Kelvin above absolute zero, or
about -460 degrees Fahrenheit, the nebula is one of the coldest places in the
known universe.
A pair of nearly symmetrical cones of matter spew out of the nebula from a central
star in a bipolar fashion, though astronomers are unsure of the ejecta’s source. One theory calls for a disk of slow-moving
material rotating about the central star’s equator, or it may also be the
result of magnetic fields working to constrain the material. The bipolar
outflow has led the Boomerang Nebula’s central star to lose about 1.5 times the
mass of the Sun over the last 1,500 years, astronomers said.
Astronomers
believe the Boomerang Nebula is comprised of ejected layers of material from a
red giant star, which – like some very young stars – exhibit similar bipolar
outflows. Each of the outflow cones spans about one light-year in length. One
light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about 5.88 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).
The Hubble telescope used
its Advanced Camera for Surveys to photograph the Boomerang Nebula in early
2005, though the images were released today.The
multicolor view seen here is a combination of images taken with different
polarization filters and a visible light filter.
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
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