Nebula Archives

January 28, 2023January 28, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Beautiful New Hubble Photo Shows Hot, Young Variable Stars in the Orion Nebula

The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes centre stage in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally, M. Robberto.

Here’s another striking image from the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. These billows of blue and red show a detailed look at a small portion of the famous Orion Nebula. But what really catches the eye are the brilliant stars with the cross-shaped diffraction spikes — a hallmark of Hubble images.

January 9, 2023January 9, 2023 by Evan Gough

This Serpent’s Tail is Made of Starry Nebulae

This image of the spectacular Sh2-54 nebula was taken in infrared light using ESO’s VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile. The clouds of dust and gas that are normally obvious in visible light are less evident here, and in this light we can see the light of the stars behind the nebulae now piercing through. Image Credit: ESO/VVVX

The ancients didn’t have the scientific understanding of nature that we have now. All they could do was look up at the night sky and wonder, which isn’t a bad way to spend time. Part of understanding something is naming it, and when the ancients looked up at the patterns in the stars, they gave them simple names based entirely on their appearances. That’s likely how the Greeks named the constellation Serpens: it looks like a snake, so they called it that.

The Greeks lacked astronomical telescopes, so they never saw any of the rich detail in Serpens that a new image from the European Southern Observatory reveals.

December 15, 2022December 15, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Here's a new Image of the Carina Nebula From Hubble

The Carina Nebula is an enormous stellar nursery about 7,500 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Carina, the Keel. Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Kraus (University of Texas at Austin), and ESO; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Like a famous (and photogenic) actor followed by paparazzi, the Carina Nebula is one of the most photographed objects in space because of its stunning beauty. Over the years, the Carina Nebula has been one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most-imaged objects.

December 14, 2022December 14, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

The Formation of the Southern Ring Nebula was Messier Than the Death of a Single Star

JWST images of the Southern Ring Nebula as seen from the telescope's NIRCam (left) and MIRI (right). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Two thousand five hundred years ago, during the height of the bronze age, an old red star died. Its outer layers expanded over time, becoming what is now known as the Southern Ring Nebula, or less romantically, NGC 3132. By the looks of it, this planetary nebula looks like many others. As Sun-like stars die, they swell to become red giants before becoming a white dwarf, and their outer layers typically become a planetary nebula. But a recent study finds that this particular nebula formed in a way quite messier than we had thought.

November 10, 2022November 10, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

A New View of the Cone Nebula From the Very Large Telescope

The Cone Nebula is part of a star-forming region of space, NGC 2264, about 2500 light-years away. This image was released on the occasion of ESO’s 60th anniversary. Credit: ESO

Here’s a dramatic and spectacular new view of the Cone Nebula, as seen by the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This nebula is part of a distant star-forming region called NGC 2264, which about 2,500 light-years away. Its pillar-like appearance is a perfect example of the shapes that can develop in giant clouds of cold molecular gas and dust, known for creating new stars.

October 1, 2022October 1, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

Astronomers Simulate the Cat’s Eye Nebula in 3D

In a recent study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of researchers led by Stanford University have produced the first computer-generated 3D model of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, which unveiled a symmetric pair of rings that enclose the outer shell of the nebula. This study holds the potential for helping us better understanding the nebula’s makeup and how it formed, as the symmetric rings provides clues that they were formed from a precessing jet, which produces strong confirmation that a binary star exists at the nebula’s center.

September 12, 2022September 12, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

The Webb Image you’ve Been Waiting For: the Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula by JWST — The inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, PDRs4All ERS Team; image processing Salomé Fuenmayor

This is it, folks. Feast your eyes! It’s what we’ve been training for—seeing the James Webb Space Telescope’s first detailed view of the Orion Nebula! JWST’s NIRCam gazed at this starbirth nursery and revealed incredible details hidden from view by gas and dust clouds.

September 7, 2022September 7, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Wow! Here's Webb's View of the Tarantula Nebula

The Tarantula Nebula as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.

Here’s the Tarantula Nebula like we’ve never seen it before. The James Webb Space Telescope turned its detectors towards the Large Magellanic Cloud about 161,000 lightyears away to take a look at 30 Doradus, more commonly known as the Tarantula Nebula. JWST’s exceptional infrared view has now revealed thousands of never-before-seen young stars in this stellar nursery, as well incredible views of the wispy, dusty filaments and the impressive collection of massive older stars.

There is so much detail in this image, if you download the full-sized version, you can pan and zoom around to see details on stars and the surrounding dust and gas. And there are even other, more distant galaxies dotting the background. If you have a big screen, even better, as it takes up over 14,000 x 8,000 pixels. Or, take a look at the video tour, below.

August 16, 2022August 16, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Brand New Stars in the Orion Nebula, Seen by Hubble

New stars seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in the Orion Nebula. ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally; Acknowledgment: M. H. Özsaraç.

The Orion Nebula is a giant cloud of gas and dust that spans more than 20,000 times the size of our own solar system. It one of the closest active star-forming regions to Earth, and is therefore one of the most observed and photographed objects in the night sky. The venerable Hubble Space Telescope has focused on the Orion Nebula many times, peering into giant cavities in the hazy gas, and at one point, Hubble took 520 images to create a giant mosaic of this spellbinding nebula.

Now, Hubble has captured new views of a wispy, colorful region in the Orion Nebula surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH 505.

May 23, 2022May 23, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Thanks to Gaia, Astronomers are Able to Map Out Nebulae in 3D

In this image of nebulae in the Orion Molecular Complex, the submillimetre-wavelength glow of dust clouds is overlaid on a view of the region in the more familiar visible light, from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The large orange bar extended down to the lower left is the Orion A portion of the Complex. The large bright cloud in the upper right of the image is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42. (Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2.) Now astronomers have a new tool to understand nebulae like this one: 3D mapping using Gaia data. — In this 2D image of nebulae in the Orion Molecular Complex, the submillimetre-wavelength glow of dust clouds is overlaid on a visible-light view of the region. The large orange bar extended down to the lower left is the Orion A portion of the Complex. The large bright cloud in the upper right is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42. (Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2.) Now astronomers have a new tool to understand nebulae like this one: 3D mapping using Gaia data.

Ever wonder what it would be like to fly through the Orion Nebula with all its newborn stars? Or buzz through the California Nebula? Of course, we’ve seen simulated “fly-throughs” of nebulae in sci-fi TV and movies and on planetarium domes. But, what if we had a warp-speed spaceship and could chart a path through the real thing? The first thing we’d need is accurate data about that region of space. That’s where a 3D model with precise distance measurements to stars and other objects would come in really handy.