Hubble's Snow Angel

By Nancy Atkinson - December 15, 2011 at 5:12 PM UTC | Extragalactic
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If you need a little help getting into the holiday spirit, the Hubble Space Telescope is here to assist. This gorgeous new image shows a bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, (S106 for short) which looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched "wings" of the nebula are actually the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star, forming the wings.

Hubble snapped this image in February 2011, using the Wide Field Camera 3. Visible narrow-band filters that isolate the hydrogen gas were combined with near-infrared filters that show structure in the cooler gas and dust.

A massive, young star, IRS 4 (Infrared Source 4), is responsible for all the activity here. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an hourglass shape. Hubble's sharp resolution reveals ripples and ridges in the gas as it interacts with the cooler interstellar medium.

Although you can't see them here, detailed studies of the nebula have also uncovered several hundred brown dwarfs. At purely infrared wavelengths, more than 600 of these sub-stellar objects appear. These "failed" stars weigh less than a tenth of the Sun. Because of their low mass, they cannot produce energy through nuclear fusion like the Sun does.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com