APOD: Dust Pillar of the Carina Nebula (2013 Mar 24)

APOD Robot · Post by **APOD Robot** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 4:08 am

Dust Pillar of the Carina Nebula

Explanation: Inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it. The monster, actually an inanimate pillar of gas and dust, measures over a light year in length. The star, not itself visible through the opaque dust, is bursting out partly by ejecting energetic beams of particles. Similar epic battles are being waged all over the star-forming Carina Nebula (NGC 3372). The stars will win in the end, destroying their pillars of creation over the next 100,000 years, and resulting in a new open cluster of stars. The pink dots are newly formed stars that have already been freed from their birth monster. The above image is only a small part of a highly detailed panoramic mosaic of the Carina Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007. The technical name for the stellar jets are Herbig-Haro objects. How a star creates Herbig-Haro jets is an ongoing topic of research, but it likely involves an accretion disk swirling around a central star. A second impressive Herbig-Haro jet is visible across the bottom of a larger image.

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Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 4:19 am

The -birth monster- link is sumtin else! Monsters, monsters everywhere. Boomer12k is gonna get lost in that link for a while.

Boomer12k · Post by **Boomer12k** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 5:49 am

Or it could be an Elephant twirling a baton...

Great image and example.

:---[===] *

Moonlady · Post by **Moonlady** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 6:36 am

Herbig Haro jets are beautiful... I learned something new, thanks for the great images and links!

MargaritaMc · Post by **MargaritaMc** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:56 am

Following one of the EXCELLENT links from this Apod took me to a detailed and labeled map at
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2007/16/supplemental.html#

Am I correct in saying that today's Apod is of a part of the Carina Nebula labeled as "Trumpeter 14"? (On the bottom right of the image in the linked map, within a rectangle labeled c1)

It certainly would be an appropriate name for this dust pillar - which is SO like an elephant's trunk!
Margarita

MargaritaMc · Post by **MargaritaMc** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:02 am

This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope along with ground-based observations. In total, three filters were used to sample narrow wavelength emission. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:

CTIO: ([O III] 501nm) blue
CTIO: (H-alpha+[N II] 658nm) green
CTIO: ( 672+673nm) red
HST/ACS: F656N (H-alpha+[N II]) luminosity*
*The higher resolution, black & white Hubble image and the lower resolution, color CTIO images were combined using a technique that takes luminosity (brightness) information from the black and white ACS image and color information from the composite CTIO image. This preserves all of the higher-resolution detail from the Hubble data while rendering a color image representing the physical processes in this active region of space.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... fastfacts/

At first I thought these were what I think of as 'actual' visible colours - but checking the wavelengths I see that although the wavelengths are within the range that human eyes can perceive, the colours assigned aren't the visual equivalents.

I presume that this is so that the representation 'of the physical processes in this active region of space' may be understood more readily?
Margarita

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:20 am

MargaritaMc wrote:Following one of the EXCELLENT links from this Apod took me to a detailed and labeled map at
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2007/16/supplemental.html#

Am I correct in saying that today's Apod is of a part of the Carina Nebula labeled as "Trumpeter 14"? (On the bottom right of the image in the linked map, within a rectangle labeled c1)

It certainly would be an appropriate name for this dust pillar - which is SO like an elephant's trunk!
Margarita

I'd say today's APOD is an enlargement of the box called d1, labeled "Herbig-Haro Stellar Jet". The location of the box is at center right.

By the way, Margarita, the name "Trumpeter 14" would be lovely indeed, as you could really imagine someone blowing the trumpet in there. But it is actually Trumpler 14, named after the person who cataloged this cluster.

The cluster, by the way, is most remarkable, as it contains an amazing superhot star of spectral class O3, maybe even O2, HD 93129A. This star is definitely one of the brightest of the extremely hot stars in the Milky Way.

Ann

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:30 am

MargaritaMc wrote:
This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope along with ground-based observations. In total, three filters were used to sample narrow wavelength emission. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:

CTIO: ([O III] 501nm) blue
CTIO: (H-alpha+[N II] 658nm) green
CTIO: ( 672+673nm) red
HST/ACS: F656N (H-alpha+[N II]) luminosity*
*The higher resolution, black & white Hubble image and the lower resolution, color CTIO images were combined using a technique that takes luminosity (brightness) information from the black and white ACS image and color information from the composite CTIO image. This preserves all of the higher-resolution detail from the Hubble data while rendering a color image representing the physical processes in this active region of space.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... fastfacts/

At first I thought these were what I think of as 'actual' visible colours - but checking the wavelengths I see that although the wavelengths are within the range that human eyes can perceive, the colours assigned aren't the visual equivalents.

I presume that this is so that the representation 'of the physical processes in this active region of space' may be understood more readily?
Margarita

Yes, that is so. Here you can see a broadband image of the Carina Nebula by the great Robert Gendler. The Trumpler 14 cluster stands out very clearly near the center of the image, to the right of what looks like a prominent blue-white binary star. (It is certainly not a true binary.) To the upper right of Trumpler 14 in Gendler's image you can see the Herbig-Haro object that is featured in today's APOD. As you can see, the details of this object don't stand out as clearly as they do in a narrowband image.

Ann

MargaritaMc · Post by **MargaritaMc** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:57 am

elephant_trunk.jpeg

the name "Trumpeter 14" would be lovely indeed, as you could really imagine someone blowing the trumpet in there. But it is actually Trumpler 14, named after the person who cataloged this cluster.

Aww!

Margarita

MikeK · Post by **MikeK** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:36 pm

Just question! On the photo, there is a pea (relative!) sized dust cloud(?) on the upper left. Any idea what that is?

Mike

stephen63 · Post by **stephen63** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:00 pm

MikeK wrote:Just question! On the photo, there is a pea (relative!) sized dust cloud(?) on the upper left. Any idea what that is?

Mike

It looks like a Bok globule.

MikeK · Post by **MikeK** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:23 pm

stephen63 wrote:
MikeK wrote:Just question! On the photo, there is a pea (relative!) sized dust cloud(?) on the upper left. Any idea what that is?

Mike
It looks like a Bok globule.

So if I have read the info on this, it is possible that it could form a new star or even a new solar system? I really love this site and I do want to learn even at my advanced age!!

Mike

jethrie · Post by **jethrie** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:41 pm

This APOD is very very very similar to the 2010 April 26 one (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100426.html)

I'm glad to see the new view (different angle and colors, but is the extract part of the same Hubble shot, or a new photograph?) - the text at least is almost unchanged compared to its 3-year-elder.

ta152h0 · Post by **ta152h0** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:43 pm

Stunning visuals

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:26 am

MikeK wrote:
So if I have read the info on this, it is possible that it could form a new star or even a new solar system?

Yes indeed, that's just what astronomers think we are seeing.

Ann

MikeK · Post by **MikeK** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:32 am

Ann wrote:
MikeK wrote:
So if I have read the info on this, it is possible that it could form a new star or even a new solar system?

Yes indeed, that's just what astronomers think we are seeing.

Ann

Amazing!

Mike

owlice · Post by **owlice** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 2:42 am

jethrie wrote:This APOD is very very very similar to the 2010 April 26 one (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100426.html)
I'm glad to see the new view (different angle and colors, but is the extract part of the same Hubble shot, or a new photograph?) - the text at least is almost unchanged compared to its 3-year-elder.

From the APOD FAQ page:

Q4: Have some APOD pictures been run more than once?
A4: Yes. Many of our readers have been with us less than a year and are unaware of some really spectacular or important astronomy pictures. New information about old pictures is becoming available over the WWW. The text and links for rerun pictures will make use of this newly available information. So although the picture might be old, some of the text and links of each APOD will be new. Also, more web surfers have larger bandwidth connections, which allows us to post higher-resolution image files that can be transferred conveniently. Software to handle more sophisticated image file formats has also become more common, so the picture's size and/or format might be new. Lastly, rerunning APODs saves us time and helps us update our archive. In general, our rerun policy currently is to only rerun APODs more than one year old to keep the pictures relatively "new" to new APOD viewers. We will almost never rerun more than two pictures in any given week. So when you load the current APOD,it is still, most probably, a new picture.

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: Dust Pillar of the Carina Nebula (2013 Mar 24)

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