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A Postcard from HST

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Courtesy Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute
Courtesy Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute

Vacations always mean postcards or email from friends, usually ones lucky enough to be off somewhere exotic taking in the sights. HST has been transmitting images and data from the cosmos’s hotspots since 1990, and with very few exceptions, its views of the universe (from Earth orbit) are inspiring.

This one is a peek inside a gas cavity inside a molecular cloud. The cave is carved by the stellar wind and intense ultraviolet radiation from a nearby hot young star. This particular “exotic locale” is located about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to the Milky Way.

So, if HST could send us back a postcard, what would it write? Let’s see!

On closer inspection N44F harbors additional surprises. The interior wall of its gaseous cavity is lined with several four- to eight-light-year-high finger-like columns of cool dust and gas. (The structure of these “columns” is similar to the Eagle Nebula’s iconic “pillars of creation” photographed by Hubble a decade ago, and is seen in a few other nebulae as well). The fingers are created by a blistering ultraviolet radiation from the central star. Like windsocks caught in a gale, they point in the direction of the energy flow. These pillars look small in this image only because they are much farther away from us than the Eagle Nebula’s pillars.

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starbirth

For Your Gazing Pleasure

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The Horsehead Nebula, courtesy of Jean-Charles Cuillandre and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
The Horsehead Nebula, courtesy of Jean-Charles Cuillandre and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

Evocative. That’s one word I can use to describe this amazing image of the Horsehead Nebula. Stunning is another. I think that’s what Dr. Jean-Charles Cuillandre, who works with the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope atop Mauna Kea, had in mind when he started a “pretty pictures” program of imagery.

Prosaically speaking, this is a cloud of gas and dust being lit up by a hot young star. It’s just a coincidence that the darkest part of the image, the Horse’s head, looks like a horse. What’s cooler to contemplate is what’s inside that horsey-looking cloud. Maybe a newborn star waiting to eat away the remaining cloud and burst forth with light in a few hundred thousand years? It’s possible.

Starbirth is like that — full of surprises. And areas of starbirth are among the hottest (literally) topics of astronomy research today. Lucky for us, scientists like Dr. Cuillandre are ready, willing, and able to give us “front row” seats for the festivities!