Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Nov 26, 2013 16:42:33 GMT -6
Space Photo: Coldest Spot in the Universe
It looks like a ghostly specter haunting outer space, but it's actually the Boomerang nebula--the coldest known object in the universe. It's even colder than the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, the explosive event that created the cosmos. How cold is it? It's minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit.
See a photo of the Boomerang nebula, which is also coldest place in the universe as it reveals its true shape through the ALMA telescope in Chile--more a bow-tie or hourglass than a boomerang.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, astronomers have been able to get a fresh, new look at this object to learn more about its frigid properties, as well as determine its true shape, which has an eerie ghost-like appearance.
For example, what looks like a boomerang shape from earth is actually a much broader structure that is expanding rapidly into space. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show the nebula is more like a bow-tie shape.
The researchers also discovered a dense lane of millimeter-sized dust grains surrounding the star, which explains why its outer cloud has an hourglass shape in visible light. These minute dust grains have created a mask that shades a portion of the central star and allows its light to leak out only in narrow but opposite directions into the cloud, giving it an hourglass appearance.
"This is important for the understanding of how stars die and become planetary nebulas," explained lead study author Raghvendra Sahai, a researcher and principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Using ALMA, we were quite literally, and figuratively, able to shed new light on the death throes of a sun-like star."
The Boomerang nebula, located about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, is a relatively young example of an object known as a planetary nebula.
Planetary nebulas, contrary to their name, are actually the end-of-life phases of stars like our sun that have sloughed off their outer layers. What remains at their centers are white dwarf stars, which emit intense ultraviolet radiation that causes the gas in the nebulae to glow and emit light in brilliant colors.
The study findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal.
It looks like a ghostly specter haunting outer space, but it's actually the Boomerang nebula--the coldest known object in the universe. It's even colder than the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, the explosive event that created the cosmos. How cold is it? It's minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit.
See a photo of the Boomerang nebula, which is also coldest place in the universe as it reveals its true shape through the ALMA telescope in Chile--more a bow-tie or hourglass than a boomerang.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, astronomers have been able to get a fresh, new look at this object to learn more about its frigid properties, as well as determine its true shape, which has an eerie ghost-like appearance.
For example, what looks like a boomerang shape from earth is actually a much broader structure that is expanding rapidly into space. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show the nebula is more like a bow-tie shape.
The researchers also discovered a dense lane of millimeter-sized dust grains surrounding the star, which explains why its outer cloud has an hourglass shape in visible light. These minute dust grains have created a mask that shades a portion of the central star and allows its light to leak out only in narrow but opposite directions into the cloud, giving it an hourglass appearance.
"This is important for the understanding of how stars die and become planetary nebulas," explained lead study author Raghvendra Sahai, a researcher and principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Using ALMA, we were quite literally, and figuratively, able to shed new light on the death throes of a sun-like star."
The Boomerang nebula, located about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, is a relatively young example of an object known as a planetary nebula.
Planetary nebulas, contrary to their name, are actually the end-of-life phases of stars like our sun that have sloughed off their outer layers. What remains at their centers are white dwarf stars, which emit intense ultraviolet radiation that causes the gas in the nebulae to glow and emit light in brilliant colors.
The study findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal.