HEIC: Festive Nebulae Light Up Milky Way Galaxy Satellite

[bystander]

Festive Nebulae Light Up Milky Way Galaxy Satellite
ESA Hubble Photo Release | 2016 Dec 20

[c][attachment=0]heic1623a[1].jpg[/attachment][/c][hr][/hr]

The sheer observing power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is rarely better illustrated than in an image such as this. This glowing pink nebula, named NGC 248, is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, just under 200 000 light-years away and yet can still be seen in great detail.

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a collection of galaxies known as the Local Group. Along with the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way is one of the Group’s most massive members, around which many smaller satellite galaxies orbit. The Magellanic Clouds are famous examples, which can easily be seen with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere.

Within the smaller of these satellite galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured two festive-looking emission nebulae, conjoined so they appear as one. Intense radiation from the brilliant central stars is causing hydrogen in the nebulae to glow pink.

Together the nebulae are called NGC 248. They were discovered in 1834 by the astronomer Sir John Herschel. NGC 248 is about 60 light-years long and 20 light-years wide. It is among a number of glowing hydrogen nebulae in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which lies in the southern constellation of Tucana (The Toucan), about 200 000 light-years away. ...

Festive Nebulas Light Up Milky Way Galaxy Satellite
NASA | STScI | HubbleSite | 2016 Dec 20

[neufer]

[b][color=#FF0000][size=150]Psychomagnotheric (Mood) Slime[/size][/color][/b]

---

<<Psychomagnotheric Slime (also known as Mood Slime and Psycho-Reactive Slime) is a powerful psycho-reactive substance in Ghostbusters II. The origin of the Mood Slime is tied to a juvenile Sloar, held in Shandor Island, beneath the Hudson River. Before his death, Ivo Shandor and his Cult of Gozer had somehow lured the young Sloar from its home hell dimension and imprisoned it in our world within a Ghostworld pocket at the heart of Shandor's island mansion. Fueled by hatred, bile and anger the creature produced a steady stream of Black Slime. Ivo Shandor, through experimentation and using equipment decades ahead of it's time, converted the Black Slime into what became known as the Mood Slime, which was then pumped directly into New York's sewers and abandoned tunnels, possibly as a means to help Gozer's crossing over. This act was later used by Vigo to his own advantage.

Egon's notes: Mood slime. With our recent breakthroughs in psychomagnatheric ectoplasm technology, we can align the valences of the substance to elicit a finely tuned range of emotions upon contact with a human target.>>

[Ann]

Click to view full size image

NGC 602 in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Photo: HST/NASA/ESA.

I'm slightly disappointed at the picture of NGC 248. Compare its fuzzy appearance and blurry stars with the ultra-sharp portrait of NGC 602, also in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The SMC is an elongated galaxy, so it is quite possible that NGC 602 is closer to us than NGC 248. In fact, NGC 602 is located slightly "outside" the Small Magellanic Cloud. If you visit this page by Robert Gendler, you can find a labeled view of the Small Magellanic Cloud, but NGC 602 is not in the picture! In the labeled version, NGC 602 is outside the picture to the left! At any rate, NGC 602 is larger and brighter than NGC 248. By the way, you can indeed find NGC 248 in Robert Gendler's and Sakib Rasool's labeled image.

Ann