My Favorite APOD Nebula Images
There are numerous mysteries contained within the Cosmos that have yet to fully be analyzed and appreciated. The unique events that transpire within the Universe everyday are unbelievably remarkable and captivating. Hidden within the immense ocean of stars we see every night lays an even more incredible spectacle in the form of Nebulae. The paragraphs that ensue will delve into the creation of Nebulae, and the many intriguing aspects of the most visually appealing amongst these particular phenomena.
The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website features many spectacular images of the Universe and the phenomena contained within it. Among this considerable collection of pictures there are several diverse photographs of nebulae; such as, The Great Carina Nebula, The Red Spider Planetary Nebula, The Ring Nebula, The Horsehead Nebula, The Crab Nebula and The Butterfly Nebula. The word, nebula, itself comes from the Greek word for cloud, and is defined as a stellar nursery made of clouds of dust and hydrogen gas.
Furthermore, there are five main types of nebulae; they include emission, reflection, planetary, dark and supernova remnants. Each type appears in a vast array of shapes, sizes and form in different ways. The unique appearance of each nebula depends on temperature, density and how the dust is spatially arranged with respect to the viewer. Although all nebulae are forms of interstellar matter some of them formed from the death of stars while others formed from atoms and simply reflect the light from the nearby stars.
The first nebula, to be highlighted, is The Great Carina Nebula, or NGC 3372, which is found approximately 7,500 light-years away from earth and is easily observed with the unaid...
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Works Cited
Block, Adam and U.Arizone Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter. "Astronomy Picture of the Day." 5 Sept. 2013. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130905.html. Photograph. 3 Dec. 2013.
Composite Image Data. "Astronomy Picture of the Day." 20 Apr. 2012. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120420.html. Ed. Robert Gendler. Photograph. 28 Nov. 2013.
Fényes, Lóránd. "Astronomy Picture of the Day." 15 Oct. 2013. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131015.html. Photograph. 29 Nov. 2013.
Milovic, Carlos, Hubble Legacy Archive and NASA. "Astronomy Picture of the Day." 29 October 2012. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131015.html. Photograph. 1 Dec. 2013.
Nemiroff, Robert and Jerry Bonnell. "apod.nasa.gov." n.d 1995. Astronomy Picture of the Day. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.
Sharp, Nigel(NOAO), et al. "Astronomy Picture of the Day." 21 Oct. 2012. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121021.html. Photograph. 1 Dec. 2013.
The Lagoon Nebula featured as Nasa’s astronomy picture of the day was photographed by John Nemcik using various filters to capture the light emitted by the Hydrogen, Sulfur, and Oxygen. While photographed showing beautiful vibrant, eye-catching colors, the Nebula would appear naturally appear gray to human eye due to poor color sensitivity existing at low-light levels (spacetelescope.org). The Lagoon Nebula is home to the formation of new stars, as well as several other interesting phenomena such as Bok globules, and the hourglass nebula. It is these regions of the nebula that make it a continuous area of interest and study for astronomers.
Hubble, Edwin. 1929, "A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Volume 15, Issue 3, pp. 168-173
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Nebula away so that it can avoid certain things. In the short story, “The Star,” the priest stated,
The Orion Nebula is a spectacular sight. Consequently, it has been a preferred target of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) over recent years. The HST has provided a great deal of insight into the complicated process of star formation. In June of 1994, C.
Solar nebula is a rotating flattened disk of gas and dust in which the outer part of the disk became planets while the center bulge part became the sun. Its inner part is hot, which is heated by a young sun and due to the impact of the gas falling on the disk during its collapse. However, the outer part is cold and far below the freezing point of water. In the solar nebula, the process of condensation occurs after enough cooling of solar nebula and results in the formation into a disk. Condensation is a process of cooling the gas and its molecules stick together to form liquid or solid particles. Therefore, condensation is the change from gas to liquid. In this process, the gas must cool below a critical temperature. Accretion is the process in which the tiny condensed particles from the nebula begin to stick together to form bigger pieces. Solar nebular theory explains the formation of the solar system. In the solar nebula, tiny grains stuck together and created bigger grains that grew into clumps, possibly held together by electrical forces similar to those that make lint stick to your clothes. Subsequent collisions, if not too violent, allowed these smaller particles to grow into objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. These larger objects are called planetesimals. As planetesimals moved within the disk and collide with one another, planets formed. Because astronomers have no direct way to observe how the Solar System formed, they rely heavily on computer simulations to study that remote time. Computer simulations try to solve Newton’s laws of motion for the complex mix of dust and gas that we believe made up the solar nebula. Merging of the planetesimals increased their mass and thus their gravitational attraction. That, in turn, helped them grow even more massive by drawing planetesimals into clumps or rings around the sun. The process of planets building undergoes consumption of most of the planetesimals. Some survived planetesimals form small moons, asteroids, and comets. The leftover Rocky planetesimals that remained between Jupiter and Mars were stirred by Jupiter’s gravitational force. Therefore, these Rocky planetesimals are unable to assemble into a planet. These planetesimals are known as asteroids. Formation of solar system is explained by solar nebular theory. A rotating flat disk with center bulge is the solar nebula. The outer part of the disk becomes planets and the center bulge becomes the sun.
"Space Weather, Solar Flares & Sun Storms: Latest News." Space.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2013. http://www.space.com/topics/solar-flares-space-weather-latest-news/
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A star begins as nothing more than a very light distribution of interstellar gases and dust particles over a distance of a few dozen lightyears. Although there is extremely low pressure existing between stars, this distribution of gas exists instead of a true vacuum. If the density of gas becomes larger than .1 particles per cubic centimeter, the interstellar gas grows unstable. Any small deviation in density, and because it is impossible to have a perfectly even distribution in these clouds this is something that will naturally occur, and the area begins to contract. This happens because between about .1 and 1 particles per cubic centimeter, pressure gains an inverse relationship with density. This causes internal pressure to decrease with increasing density, which because of the higher external pressure, causes the density to continue to increase. This causes the gas in the interstellar medium to spontaneously collect into denser clouds. The denser clouds will contain molecular hydrogen (H2) and interstellar dust particles including carbon compounds, silicates, and small impure ice crystals. Also, within these clouds, there are 2 types of zones. There are H I zones, which contain neutral hydrogen and often have a temperature around 100 Kelvin (K), and there are H II zones, which contain ionized hydrogen and have a temperature around 10,000 K. The ionized hydrogen absorbs ultraviolet light from it’s environment and retransmits it as visible and infrared light. These clouds, visible to the human eye, have been named nebulae. The density in these nebulae is usually about 10 atoms per cubic centimeter. In brighter nebulae, there exists densities of up to several thousand atoms per cubic centimete...
The Andromeda Galaxy is the Milky Way Galaxy’s closest neighbor; with it being around 2.5 million lightyears away from Earth. It was once referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older readings. It gets its name from the Andromeda constellation which in turn received its name from the Greek goddess Andromeda.
Tyler, Pat. Supernova. NASA’s Heasarc: Education and Public Information. 26 Jan. 2003. 22 Nov. 2004