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.
No comments:
Post a Comment