Starship Asterisk*

The Red Rectangle Nebula from Hubble

Explanation: How was the unusual Red Rectangle nebula created? At the nebula's center is a young binary star system that surely powers the nebula but does not, as yet, explain its colors. The unusual shape of the Red Rectangle is likely due to a thick dust torus which pinches the otherwise spherical outflow into tip-touching cone shapes. Because we view the torus edge-on, the boundary edges of the cone shapes seem to form an X. The distinct rungs suggest the outflow occurs in fits and starts. The unusual colors of the nebula are less well understood, however, and current speculation holds that they are partly provided by hydrocarbon molecules that may actually be building blocks for organic life. The Red Rectangle nebula lies about 2,300 light years away towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). The nebula is shown above in unprecedented detail as captured recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. In a few million years, as one of the central stars becomes further depleted of nuclear fuel, the Red Rectangle nebula will likely bloom into a planetary nebula.

<< Previous APOD

Discuss Any APOD

Next APOD >>

[/b]

Thats really amazing! Not only does it give a whole new meaning to X marks the spot, but the picture we see is just what Hubble saw, color and all.

It's a beaut!

The article refers to a young binary system and one component "blooming" into a planetary nebula in a few million years. Low mass stars remain on the main sequence for billions of years.

Wow! What a sight! It's like the top is the mirror image of the bottom; and the left is the mirror image of the right. Reminds me of looking through a kaleidoscope. Really is a beautiful photograph.

The distinct rungs suggest the outflow occurs in fits and starts.

May I suggest that they look to be formed by a continuous sweeping motion?

I just clicked on the link that by bystander provided and as i was staring at it i realized that it looks like the center is closer and the outer parts are farther away so it gives me the impression that it is heading in this direction. DUCK!!

While I am always in awe of the mysteries the Universe presents to us, I am also impressed by the ingenuity of astronomers and astrophysicists to find answers. When it comes to the unusual colors of the RR, it would be great, if somehow links could have been provided to the papers by Schmidt, Cohen, & Margon (1980, ApJ, 239, L133), Cohen et al. (2004, AJ, 127, 2362), and Vijh et al. (2006, ApJ, 653, 1336)

Schmidt et al (1980) demonstrated that the red color of the RR is primarily caused by a powerful broad emission band (now known as ERE) in the red part of the optical spectrum. Vijh et al. (2006) showed, through narrow-band imaging, that this band dominates the X-shaped outflow structure.
The nearly spherical blue inner halo is largely caused by ordinary dust scattering, with some fluorescence by small neutral PAHs thrown i for good measure.
Cohen et al. (2004) published the first high-resolution HST image of the RR and provided a detailed analysis of its morphology and color distribution.

Our 2009 paper ( Witt et al. 2009, ApJ, 693, 1946) finally provided the answer to the mystery of of the origin of the EUV and FUV radiation in the RR, which is needed to explain the inner H II region in the nebula as well as the excitation of the ERE in the RR. There are numerous other bipolar protoplanetary nebulae which lack inner H II regions and ERE, although their chemistry and dust composition may be quite similar to that of the RR. What is lacking in them is a powerful source of EUV and FUV radiation, which in the case of the RR is provided by the hot accretion disk surrounding the secondary. This is the main reason why the color of the the RR appears to be so unusual.

Adolf N. Witt
University of Toledo

beyond wrote:I just clicked on the link that by bystander provided and as i was staring at it i realized that it looks like the center is closer and the outer parts are farther away so it gives me the impression that it is heading in this direction. DUCK!!

It's an optical illusion. So don't worry about it.

I've never seen this picture before. It's beautiful.

FS

Redbone wrote:The distinct rungs suggest the outflow occurs in fits and starts.

May I suggest that they look to be formed by a continuous sweeping motion?

I would like to agree. As this is a binary system, I can imagine these patterns are formed by the gravitational influence of the two stars orbiting each other. Are there any simulation about that?

What a fascinating picture. If it hadn't been mentioned that this was a Hubble photo I would have thought that it was a photo taken on some rainy night driving along a dark highway with some unique distortions of a bright light on the highway.

The straight lines, right angles and almost precise symmetry are just so different from all the other wavy, curved or ragged lines that we usually see in astrophotos. Something very different has to be going on there.

It's a true tease to not be able to see rotations on different axis. Ahh, those sweet mysteries ....

I'm used to amaze me with the APOD photos and this time was different.
For a few hours I thought there far from the forces of nature may form structures
square that scale, but do not see how rotor in 90-degree angles matter
On this scale without in crystals small scale.
I think that the red rectangle Nebula shall not be more than a gravitational lens
effect determined by binary stars front and is as two crosses Einstein rotated.

Still having a hard time picturing how the torus of dust causes the "x" shape if it is edge on. I would have expected something like two bars of light at the top & bottom. Would be interesting to see what a computer animation of this is like, showing views from various angles. "The universe is not only stranger than we Imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine" - unknown

Bagemup4u wrote:Still having a hard time picturing how the torus of dust causes the "x" shape if it is edge on. I would have expected something like two bars of light at the top & bottom. Would be interesting to see what a computer animation of this is like, showing views from various angles.

I think the torus is edge on, with its axis of rotation pointing left and right in this image. It is too small to see, being lost in the central stellar brightness. This torus focuses the outflow, so it streams in cones to the left and right. It is these cones we see as the "X" shape.

I've been thinking about this pic since it was posted earlier in the other forum before making it to APOD and I just can't get it visualized. The part on the top and the bottom of the star is throwing me off pretty bad.

geckzilla wrote:I've been thinking about this pic since it was posted earlier in the other forum before making it to APOD and I just can't get it visualized. The part on the top and the bottom of the star is throwing me off pretty bad.

Is this any help?

Everything in this rendering is inside the central brightness of the APOD image, but it shows how you have two stars, a dust torus, and a focused conical output.

The horizontal and vertical lines coming out of the center in the APOD are just diffraction artifacts, not part of the nebula.

Yeah, I get the diffraction artifacts, and I get the X formed by cones, I just can't quite get the torus down. I can only visualize the two cones.

geckzilla wrote:Yeah, I get the diffraction artifacts, and I get the X formed by cones, I just can't quite get the torus down. I can only visualize the two cones.

Well, the rendering I linked shows the torus as well.

So, what's the bulk of the X formed by? The cones or the torus?

geckzilla wrote::-| So, what's the bulk of the X formed by? The cones or the torus?

The X is nothing but a side view of the cones. The torus is one pixel in the middle of the APOD- far too small to be resolved. Take the entire rendering of the two stars, dust torus, and cone centers and squeeze it down into the very center of the APOD to put things in scale.

Without a dust torus around the central star, the material would come out as a spherical shell. The torus simply shadows much of that sphere, leaving only the cones along the torus's axis of rotation open to flow.

Ahhh, ok, I get it now. I was misreading and therefore completely misunderstanding the description. Thanks, Chris.