Last update December 27, 2021 at 05:06 PM
Scientists have managed to obtain a rare high definition image of the Carina Nebula (or Carina) located about 8500 light years away.
The Carina Nebula is one of the largest nebulae in our galaxy. With a span of 300 light years, it is brighter than the famous Orion nebula that can be seen with the naked eye from Earths as a whitish spot.
This nebula is unfortunately the least known because of its distant distance. It takes 8500 years to reach it if you move at the speed of light. For the rest, here is an interesting fact about the Carina nebula.
[bctt tweet=”Science: For the first time, we have a high definition image of the Carina Nebula located nearly 8500 light years from Earth” username=”tedidevblog”]
Some interesting facts
In our introduction, we mentioned that the Carina Nebula is one of the largest in the galaxy. What interests us even more is what it contains. In this nebula there are special and interesting stars:
The first of which we are certain weighs 100 to 150 times more than the sun and its brightness is 4 million times more. Scientists are sure of this because it is the most visible. This star is named Eta of the Carina (η Car).
At TediDev we are glad that this thing is very far from us. According to the scientists, this star is not the brightest and even less the most to be feared.
There are others whose data are less reliable but which are 80 times more massive than the sun and so unstable that they could cause the phenomenon of supernova and hypernova.
The supernova phenomenon is a gigantic explosion whose energy released is 10 to the power of 30 (10 with 30 zeros) times that of an atomic bomb. The hypernova releases an energy of more than 100 times the supernova. Do the math.
Source: Wikipedia
Still very happy that they are all very far from us. Now that we know more or less what the Carina Nebula is, let's take a look at what it looks like in high definition image.
HD image of the Carina Nebula
So far, astronomers have successfully obtained the images highest resolution ever obtained from the Carina Nebula. These images display a thick cloud of dust and gas in which stars are actively forming.
The author of the quality of these hd images of the nebula is the Gemimi South telescope in Chile.
"The results are astoundingRice University physicist and astronomer Patrick Hartigan said.
«We see a wealth of detail never seen before along the edge of the cloud, including a long series of parallel ridges that can be produced by a magnetic field, an almost perfectly smooth sine wave, and fragments at the top that appear to be the process of cloud shear by strong wind. "
Advantage of having a more detailed image of the nebula
The birth of a star or a planet is a fascinating but difficult process to observe. The ideal conditions for this to happen is the presence of a thick cloud of gas and dust rich in hydrogen molecules. This thick cloud must be so dense that some regions must collapse under their own mass.
The collapse of these unstable nodes causes various astronomical phenomena that form stars and planets. So the best star formation sites are the densest and dustiest. Unfortunately these images appear very blurry with standard telescopes.
How were these high definition images obtained?
The problem that astronomers face is that light entering a telescope experiences a lot of distortion on its way to Earth. This results in a poor quality image on a standard telescope.
The HD image obtained is made possible thanks to the technique called adaptive optics. The Gemimi South telescope used it to produce a high-quality image of the Carina nebula. We can see the comparison in the following video
The difference between the pictures is striking.
Last update December 27, 2021 at 05:06 PM
Conclusion
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You can download a high resolution version of the image here. The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
