Friday, 27 February 2015
The most spectacular astro photos "Pillars of Creation"
"Pillars of Creation" is the most impressive image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope; Gas colossal columns were photographed for the first time in 1995, and recent Hubble "visited" again these formations, creating even more amazing pictures of them.
Cold gas giant columns, bathed in ultraviolet light coming from a cluster of young stars, massive, located in the Eagle Nebula (M16) -Lights 6,500 years from Earth, is the subject of pictures famous "Pillars of Creation". The original was made by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995
New version of the photo shown in the meeting American Astronomical Society, has a higher resolution and a wider angle, showing for the first time, and the base of the columns of gas.
At the request of astronomers around the world, Hubble took pictures operators not only in the ultraviolet, as was done in 1995. The initial image, but also visible light and infrared.
In infrared light, which has a greater penetration by gas and dust columns appear flimsy and they are suggested by countless stars. Inside the "pillars" are hiding, also newly formed stars.
"Pillars of Creation" is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, some 7,000 light years from Earth.They are so named because the gas and dust are in the process of creating new stars, while also being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed. Taken on April 1, 1995, it was named one of the top ten photographs from Hubble by Space.com. The astronomers responsible for the photo were Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen, at the time both of Arizona State University. In 2011, the region was revisited by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory.
Theorized destruction
Images taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a cloud of hot dust in the vicinity of the Pillars of Creation that one group interpreted to be a shock wave produced by a supernova. The appearance of the cloud suggests a supernova would have destroyed it 6000 years ago. Given the distance of roughly 7000 light years to the Pillars of Creation, this would mean that they have actually already been destroyed, but because of the finite speed of light, this destruction is not yet visible on Earth, but should be visible in about 1000 years. However, this interpretation of the hot dust has been disputed by an astronomer uninvolved in the Spitzer observations, who argues that a supernova should have resulted in stronger radio and x-ray radiation than has been observed, and that winds from massive stars could instead have heated the dust. If this is the case, the Pillars of Creation will undergo a more gradual erosion.
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