Slightly over four hundred years ago Galileo Galilel had just begun to improve telescopes with hopes of exploring space (Leonard 135). In the present day, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, more commonly known as NASA, are capable of taking high definition pictures of the endless mysterious in our galaxy and beyond. With these highly advanced telescopes, NASA has been able to photograph many of space’s phenomena’s. One of these photographs was of the nebulae known as the Pillars of Creation. The Pillars of Creation are columns of interstellar gas and dust, which also have stars being formed within them. Due to NASA’s improvements of the telescope, it is now possible to view and examine this nebula. According to Douglas Leonard, …show more content…
Cheseaux originally discovered the star cluster within the nebula. Around twenty years later, Messier famously discovered the nebulosity surrounding the star cluster. The image of this nebula was originally captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, and was then re-captured about twenty years. The newest image captured by this telescope shows any transformations of these pillars and also provides a sharper image of the Eagle Nebula. The first picture, which was captured in 1995, quickly became very popular as it shows one of spaces many wonders. The image is so popular that “it has appeared on postage stamps, T-shirts and pillows, and even made the rounds in television shows and movies” (Redd). Then, in 2015, this nebula was revisited and was then captured through a new camera called Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009 and wasn’t available for the first image. This new camera captured the image with infrared technology. This newly instated technology made the pillars to be fairly transparent, which allows astronomers to study the pillars with a new perspective. The new image confirmed scientist’s beliefs that stars were being created within the pillars. Due to the infrared technology, scientists were able to discover many long jets that were created by several protostar systems. These jets are evidence of stars being “born” and were only …show more content…
Even though this has never been seen, the pillars are still known as a “stellar nursery” according to Jake Hebert, an astronomer and a writer for the Institute of Creation Research. Herbert claims that the stars within the nebula are so large in size that they should have used up all of their nuclear energy within ten million years, and thus should already be “dead” by now. However the fact that these stars are still burning and are still very bright is ample evidence that they were “born” or created recently. Although there is evidence that stars are being created within this nebula, there is also evidence that this nebula is being destroyed. Many astronomers believe that this nebula has actually already been destroyed and no longer exists. Since these pillars are located seven thousand light years from Earth, it takes light seven thousand years to travel to where we can observe it. This means that when we observe the pillars, we are really looking seven thousand years into the past. Although we can see them still intact with our telescopes, “the pillars don’t exist, and they were destroyed more than a thousand years ago” (Diaz). A supernova that exploded rough six thousand years ago is the main culprit to the destruction of these pillars. Astronomers can see the supernova advancing towards the pillars, but we will not be able to witness these pillars being destroyed for a thousand
Messier 8, nicknamed the Lagoon Nebula is an interstellar cloud located in Sagittarius, discovered by John Flamsteed in 1680. It is one of the few nebulae that can be seen by the naked eye. It was given its nickname by Agnes
In the article from the official NASA website, NASA gives a list of Hubble’s accomplishments, which gives the reader a comprehensive picture of Hubble’s importance. Hubble has not only given astronomers the most detailed images of outer-space in existence, but also taug...
According to Webster’s Dictionary, a pillar is a firm upright support for a building or superstructure. Pillars are essential in keeping a building strong and safe. If the pillars of the building become weak and damage, the entire building could collapse.
2, Alter Dinsmore, Cleminshaw H. Clarence, Philips G John. Pictorial Astronomy. United States: Sidney Feinberg, 1963.
Nebula that was destroyed after it’s sun went supernova. Troubled by his findings, the priest
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.
The nebula is a cloud in outer space made of gas and dust and stars are being made in there. There are three types of nebulas the emission, reflection, and planetary. The emission nebula shines with its own light. The reflection nebula is a cloud made of gas and dust and it doesn’t create its own light, but shines from the reflection of nearby stars. The planetary nebula is a ring-shaped nebula formed by an expanding shell of gas around an aging
Within Taurus, you can see many objects within the area of the constellation. Some of these objects are nebulas, stars and star clusters. One object within Taurus is the Crab Nebula, or Messier 1. It is a “pulsar wind nebula, or plerion” (“Taurus Constellation”). The Crab Nebula that i...
The constellation also hosts the Orion Nebula (located directly below the "belt" of Orion), one of the most photographed and appreciated nebulas in the sky.
Azophi identified a large cloud in the night sky which turned out to be the Andromeda Galaxy.
Ancient Chinese astronomers poetically named these explosions ‘guest stars’ and a full catalog of them. This catalog was maintained over centuries and carefully noted their various appearances and offers accurate information about their positions which has enabled modern astronomers to find remnants of these explosions in the sky today (International Dunhuang Project). Throughout the years, the Chinese also developed three different cosmological models. The first model was the Gai Tian. This model was a hemispherical dome that conceived the heavens as a hemisphere lying over the Earth, which was dome-shaped.
As Scientific accomplishments continue to reach new heights it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue the case that a God truly exists. Arthur C. Clarke illustrates this idea to an extreme level in The Star, a short story centered around a Jesuit Chief Astrophysicist and his crew's mission to explore and reconstruct the events that lead up to the cause of the Phoenix Nebula, a star turned supernova that had erupted six thousand years prior. What he discovers challenges his religious integrity to its core. The Jesuit is decorated with contributions in astronomy and geophysics, in his arguments with his crew he is quick to cite his three papers in the Astrophysical Journal and his five papers in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Hubble Telescope is the world’s first space-based optical telescope. The Hubble telescope received its name from American astronomer Dr. Edwin P. Hubble. Dr. Hubble confirmed an ever expanding universe which provided the basic foundation of the Big Bang theory. The first concept of the Hubble telescope came from Lyman Spitzer in 1946, who at that time was a professor and researcher at Yale University. In 1946, Professor Spitzer believed that Earth’s atmosphere blurs and distorts light, and a space orbited telescope would be able to overcome this problem.
There are a handful of ways that astronomers are trying to explain this, however they all agree that the nature of this occurrence is bizarre. It has been quoted that the structures appear to be “something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” There is still much speculation as to if this is simply an odd meteor shower, the result of recent large-scale planetary interaction in that area, or alien structures designed to harness the energy of the star. However, scientists are still looking into the latter theory by searching for radio waves around the star. In July of this year, the Kepler Space Telescope gave us another ground-breaking
Tyler, Pat. Supernova. NASA’s Heasarc: Education and Public Information. 26 Jan. 2003. 22 Nov. 2004