Visitors Now:
Total Visits:
Total Stories:
Profile image
By Anne's Astronomy News
Contributor profile | More stories
Story Views

Now:
Last Hour:
Last 24 Hours:
Total:

Anne’s Picture of the Day: The Bean Nebula

Wednesday, December 26, 2012 7:42
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

(Before It's News)

read more at Anne’s Astronomy News http://annesastronomynews.com/

December 26, 2012

The Bean Nebula, a large emission nebula in the LMC

LHA 120-N 44 or N44

Image Credit: ESO/Manu Mejias

The Bean Nebula (LHA 120-N 44, or N44 for short) is an emission nebula of around 325 by 250 light-years across, and the second largest star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite of our Milky Way galaxy, which is about 160,000 light-years away from us in the southern constellation of Dorado. It is part of a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters.

The Large Magellanic Cloud contains many bright bubbles of glowing gas, and the Bean Nebula is an example of a superbubble filled with gas blown into the interstellar medium by multiple supernovae and stellar winds. The massive shell of material that makes up the superbubble is surrounding NGC 1929, a large cluster of many bright young stars, and is without doubt the original source of the material that formed these stars. These hot young stars are emitting intense ultraviolet light and causing the gas to glow.

This cosmic superbubble is expanding outwards due to an interaction between two destructive forces generated by the stars at its center: 1) young stars in the cluster send out streams of charged particles, known as stellar winds, that have cleared out the bubble center, and 2) massive stars have exploded to create supernovae shock waves that push the gas out further.

As the hot and compressed bubble of material expands it ploughs into the surrounding material compressing it as well and trigging new star formation at the edges of the region. The Bean Nebula has produced some of the most massive stars known. This region of energetic star formation is one of the most active in the nearby Universe, and only surpassed in the size and activity by the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus, or NGC 2070).

This image was created by Manu Mejias from Argentina, using data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope as part of the 2010 Hidden Treasures competition.

n/a



Source:

Report abuse

Comments

Your Comments
Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

Top Stories
Recent Stories

Register

Newsletter

Email this story
Email this story

If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.