Behold! Hubble telescope catches stunning photos of planetary nebula fireworks
By Meghan Bartels 2 hours ago
Incredible new images from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal nearly dead stars spewing blasts of hot gas into deep space in strange but stunning ways.
From studying those images, scientists now suspect that two spectacular nebulas are each powered by a pair of stars merging together. As they do so, the stars spit shock waves of energy through the surrounding gas and dust the stars have previously leaked. Scientists used the full range of Hubble's instruments.
"When I looked in the Hubble archive and realized no one had observed these nebulas with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 across its full wavelength range, I was floored," Joel Kastner, an astronomical imaging specialist at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and lead author of the new study, said in a statement.
The Hubble Space Telescope studied two dramatic planetary nebulas, the Butterfly Nebula and a
second that resembles a jewel-bug. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT))
Hubble has studied plenty of nebulas over its 30-year career, of course. But most of those images have relied primarily on optical and near-infrared light only, according to the scientists behind the new research. The new images add near-ultraviolet light as well, incorporating the whole range of light wavelengths that Hubble can observe.
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https://www.space.com/hubble-telescope-stunning-planetary-nebulas-photos.html?utm_source=notification
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