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Monday, August 6, 2012

Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Bubble Nebula 
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

Blown by the wind from a massive star, this interstellar apparition has a surprisingly familiar shape.

Cataloged as NGC 7635, it is also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work.

Above and right of the Bubble's center is a hot, O star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and around 45 times more massive than the Sun.

A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud.

The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia.

This view of the cosmic bubble is composed of narrowband and broadband image data, capturing details in the emission region while recording a natural looking field of stars.




Image Credit & Copyright: Yves Van den Broek