2023-10-04 18:53:35
An image released on Monday (2) by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) highlights a pink cosmic region called IC1284, approximately 5,900 light-years from Earth, which is classified by astronomers as an emission nebula.
Summary:
Nebulae are interstellar clouds of dust and gases;Researchers use data from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to analyze these regions;The objective is to locate star nurseries to understand the formation, development and death of these bodies;One of the images shows a nebula of pinkish emission, accompanied by two blue reflection nebulae; Each of these colors indicates a characteristic of the nebula in question.
Emission nebulae are bright, diffuse clouds of ionized gas that emit their own light. This one, in particular, which appears in the center of the image, glows in shades of red from the formation of active stars and hydrogen fusion in the region, which is in the constellation of Sagittarius.
“Their pink glow comes from electrons inside hydrogen atoms: they are excited by radiation from young stars, but then lose energy and emit a specific color or wavelength of light,” says the statement from ESO.
Read more:
Blue nebulae reflect starlight
According to the note, astronomers photographed the IC1284 nebula using OmegaCAM, a wide-field camera on the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), which is located at the Paranal Observatory, in Chile.
In the same image, two reflection nebulae appear, known as NGC6589 and NGC6590, positioned in the lower right corner of the scene. Unlike emission nebulae, interstellar dust clouds in reflection nebulae mirror the light of one or more nearby stars, creating the observed blue color.
“Dust in a reflection nebula preferentially scatters shorter, bluer wavelengths of light from nearby stars, which is what gives these nebulae their glow,” the photo caption reads in the statement. “It’s the same reason the sky is blue!”
According to ESO, the new image is part of research that aims to observe nebulae in visible light to understand how stars are born, live and die.
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