Sharpless 2- 106 also known as the cosmic angel, is a nebula located roughly 2,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus. At the center of the nebula lies a massive star which emits large plooms of extremely hot gas from either end of its poles, seen in the image above. The central star is referred to as S106 IR or S106IRS 4. The central star is roughly 17 times larger than our sun with a surface temperature of around 40,000 Kelvin. The nebula is about 2.2 light years in size and contains areas where star formation takes place, being home to brown dwarf stars and protostars. Heat emitted from these surrounding stars ionizes the gases within the nebula, which causes the gas clouds to glow.
The image above was captured by the wide field camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope.
This statue of Zeus was thought to be at the centre of Olympia in 438BC, standing about 13 meters in height. After completing the statue, the Greek sculptor phiedias had a pool of olive oil constructed at the bottom of the sculpture. The oil would slowly evaporate, coating the statue in oil, helping to keep the ivory skin of the statue from cracking. Emperor Theodosius had the statue dismantled around the 5th century AD, where it is said to have been shipped to Constantinople, then possibly destroyed in a palace fire.
Messier 16 is a gigantic cloud made up of interstellar gas and dust, sitting about 7,200 light years away from Earth in the constellation Serpens. The nebula is home to both newly forming and older stars. The heat and radiation coming from these stars have ionized the surrounding gases, causing the clouds to glow in various colours. The nebula contains many open clusters of stars, one such cluster is said to contain around 8,500 stars. One of the brightest stars found within Messier 16 is HD 168076 which is calculated to be 80 times bigger than our sun and 1 million times brighter.
The nebula was first discovered by Jean Philippe de Chateaux in 1745. The image above was captured by the Wide Field Imager Camera at the La Silla Observatory.
