Return to the Carina Nebula

Esahubble_potw1127a_1024

esahubble_potw1127a July 4th, 2011

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA 

Looking like an elegant abstract art piece painted by talented hands, this picture is actually a NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a small section of the Carina Nebula. Part of this huge nebula was documented in the well-known Mystic Mountain picture (heic1007a) and this picture takes an even closer look at another piece of this bizarre astronomical landscape (heic0707a). The Carina Nebula itself is a star-forming region about 7500 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Carina (The Keel: part of Jasons ship the Argo). Infant stars blaze with a ferocity so severe that the radiation emitted carves away at the surrounding gas, sculpting it into strange structures. The dust clumps towards the upper right of the image, looking like ink dropped into milk, were formed in this way. It has been suggested that they are cocoons for newly forming stars. The Carina Nebula is mostly made from hydrogen, but there are other elements present, such as oxygen and sulphur. This provides evidence that the nebula is at least partly formed from the remnants of earlier generations of stars where most elements heavier than helium were synthesised. The brightest stars in the image are not actually part of the Carina Nebula. They are much closer to us, essentially being the foreground to the Carina Nebulas background. This picture was created from images taken with Hubbles Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Images through a blue filter (F450W) were coloured blue and images through a yellow/orange filter (F606W) were coloured red. The field of view is 2.4 by 1.3 arcminutes.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1127a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Carina Nebula
Subject - Milky Way
Nebula
Esahubble_potw1127a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 10h 44m 28.2s
DEC = -59° 38’ 21.6”
Orientation
North is 142.0° CCW
Field of View
2.5 x 1.3 arcminutes
Constellation
Carina

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Blue Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (B) -
Green Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (Pseudogreen (B+V)) -
Red Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (V) -
Esahubble_potw1127a_1280
×
ID
potw1127a
Subject Category
B.4  
Subject Name
Carina Nebula
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA 
Release Date
2011-07-04T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1127a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
WFPC2, WFPC2, WFPC2
Color Assignment
Blue, Green, Red
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
B, Pseudogreen (B+V), V
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
161.117626836, -59.6393267999
Reference Dimension
1481.0, 761.0
Reference Pixel
740.5, 380.5
Scale
-2.78552546725e-05, 2.78552546725e-05
Rotation
141.9800000000001
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1127a
Metadata Date
2011-06-27T09:57:34+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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