NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 19 January 2023: Bewitching Star-forming Seagull Nebula | Tech News

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 19 January 2023: Bewitching Star-forming Seagull Nebula

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 19 January 2023: Bewitching Star-forming Seagull Nebula located in the constellation Monoceros.

By: HT TECH
| Updated on: Jan 19 2023, 13:58 IST
Sickening! From light to darkness, DEATH of a star is the birth of a Black Hole!
Seagull Nebula
1/5 What is a Black Hole? According to NASA, a black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole’s “surface,” called its event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit of the cosmos. Matter and radiation fall in, but they can’t get out. (NASA)
Seagull Nebula
2/5 Classes of black holes: Two main classes of black holes have been extensively observed. Stellar-mass black holes with three to dozens of times the Sun’s mass are spread throughout our Milky Way galaxy, while supermassive monsters weighing 100,000 to billions of solar masses are found in the centers of most big galaxies, ours included. (AP)
Seagull Nebula
3/5 How are black holes birthed? A stellar-mass black hole formation happens when a star with more than 20 solar masses exhausts the nuclear fuel in its core and collapses under its own weight. The collapse triggers a supernova explosion that blows off the star’s outer layers. But if the crushed core contains more than about three times the Sun’s mass, no known force can stop its collapse and the birth of of a black hole. The origin of supermassive black holes is poorly understood, but we know they exist from the very earliest days of a galaxy’s lifetime. Once born, black holes can grow by accreting matter that falls into them, including gas stripped from neighboring stars and even other black holes. (NASA)
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4/5 First image of black hole: In 2019, astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — an international collaboration that networked eight ground-based radio telescopes into a single Earth-size dish — captured an image of a black hole for the first time. It appears as a dark circle silhouetted by an orbiting disk of hot, glowing matter. The supermassive black hole is located at the heart of a galaxy called M87, located about 55 million light-years away, and weighs more than 6 billion solar masses. Its event horizon extends so far it could encompass much of our solar system out to well beyond the planets. (Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)
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5/5 Studying black holes: Astronomers have been studying black holes through the various forms of light they emit for decades. Although light can’t escape a black hole’s event horizon, the enormous tidal forces in its vicinity cause nearby matter to heat up to millions of degrees and emit radio waves and X-rays. Some of the material orbiting even closer to the event horizon may be hurled out, forming jets of particles moving near the speed of light that emit radio, X-rays and gamma rays. Jets from supermassive black holes can extend hundreds of thousands of light-years into space. NASA’s Hubble, Chandra, Swift, NuSTAR, and NICER space telescopes, as well as other missions, continue to take the measure of black holes and their environments. (NASA)
Seagull Nebula
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The Seagull Nebula is located nearly 3800 light-years away from Earth. (NASA/Carlos Taylor)

NASA defines stars as the most widely recognized astronomical objects, and represent the most fundamental building blocks of galaxies. They are celestial objects millions of years old floating in space. The older and bigger the star, the brighter it appears. But how are these bright and shining objects formed? Wellm stars are formed in star-forming regions called Nebulas. The makeup of a Nebula consists of gases, mainly hydrogen and helium.

Gravity within a molecular cloud causes the gas and dust to collapse, forming dense cores. As the cores grow denser and hotter, they begin to fuse hydrogen atoms into helium, which releases energy in the form of light and heat. Once a core reaches a certain temperature and density, a new star is born in a Nebula.

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a bewitching snapshot of the Seagull Nebula which is a star-forming region located about 3800 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros. The nebula gets its name as it appears to have the shape of a seagull in the sky when observed through a telescope. A star cluster named NGC 2362 is embedded in this star-forming region which illuminates the surrounding dust and gas.

The image was captured by Carlos Taylor, an amateur astrophotographer.

NASA's explanation

A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. Using narrowband image data, this 3-panel mosaic of the cosmic bird covers a 2.5-degree swath across the plane of the Milky Way, near the direction of Sirius, alpha star of the constellation Canis Major. Likely part of a larger shell structure swept up by successive supernova explosions, the broad Seagull Nebula is cataloged as Sh2-296 and IC 2177.

The prominent bluish arc below and right of center is a bow shock from runaway star FN Canis Majoris. This complex of gas and dust clouds with other stars of the Canis Majoris OB1 association spans over 200 light-years at the Seagull Nebula's estimated 3,800 light-year distance.

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First Published Date: 19 Jan, 13:58 IST
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