APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

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APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by APOD Robot » Mon Nov 07, 2011 8:48 am

Image Star Forming Region S106

Explanation: Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106 Nebula (S106), pictured above. A large disk of dust and gas orbiting Infrared Source 4 (IRS 4), visible in dark red near the image center, gives the nebula an hourglass or butterfly shape. S106 gas near IRS 4 acts as an emission nebula as it emits light after being ionized, while dust far from IRS 4 reflects light from the central star and so acts as a reflection nebula. Detailed inspection of images like the above image has revealed hundreds of low-mass brown dwarf stars lurking in the nebula's gas. S106 spans about 2 light-years and lies about 2000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by starstruck » Mon Nov 07, 2011 11:09 am

Can't fail to be impressed by how such a turbulent maelstrom can appear to be so downright beautiful.
The link to the full res version is simply "wowsa-rama!"

jasonbetska

Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by jasonbetska » Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:11 pm

Could the waterfall nebula actually be a wormhole. Could it be ionized gases traveling. R
Through the wormhole as the get heated up as they pass through it at the speed of light. Maybe were witnessing the first wormhole. I'm sure they can be many light yrs wide.

Also on another note. Why is it that the reflecting of light, sun light, or stars through a lens alway either emit 6 or 8 sides either like a hexagon or in the case of this new star six lines ejecting out from the star. Sometimes on tv the reflections of light or mist show an actual hexagon or octogon.. I think its strange and wanted to know if there's a scientific answer for this.

Thanks

Jason

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by orin stepanek » Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:29 pm

I was really impressed by the beauty of this nebula! 8-) 8-) 8-) :D
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by NGC3314 » Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:37 pm

jasonbetska wrote:Also on another note. Why is it that the reflecting of light, sun light, or stars through a lens alway either emit 6 or 8 sides either like a hexagon or in the case of this new star six lines ejecting out from the star. Sometimes on tv the reflections of light or mist show an actual hexagon or octogon.. I think its strange and wanted to know if there's a scientific answer for this.
Most reflecting telescopes have a secondary mirror supported in front of the primary by a set of struts known as a spider. Light diffraction caused by these supports yields the sets of lines radiating from bright objects (actually from all objects but it's only noticeable for very bright ones). A 4-vaned support produces 4 such diffraction spikes, while a 3 or 6-vaned one makes six spikes (they go both directions). The GTC and Keck telescopes both have hexagonal symmetry. Hubble has a 4-vaned spider, whose effects you can see in many of its images. Some planetary observers have tried spiders with curved vanes - that gets rid of the spikes, but at the expense of spreading that diffracted light around in all directions and reducing the contrast of fine detail in the image. In Schmidt-Cassegrain designs, the secondary mirror is attached to a thin correcting lens, thus getting rid of diffraction spikes.

Video cameras sometimes show these hexagonal or octagonal patterns in internal reflections of a bright light source (often out of the fie of view) because their lenses incorporate an internal diaphragm to change the intensity of light reaching the video chip. These use blades to constrict the lens opening, and they very often have a hexagonal or octagonal pattern with 6 or 8 blades closing down. Same thing in many still cameras, but there one may have more freedom to adjust settings to minimize the effect or use it artistically (some digital graphics deliberately introduce such lens flares to mimic photography).

just carl

Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by just carl » Mon Nov 07, 2011 3:32 pm

I've mentioned this previously. Why not have a second photo with arrows, pointers or something to indicate what the discussion is concerned with. It's nice for the ones posting the photo since they already know what is what, but for the average person, much is lost in the unknown. By that I mean many of us do not know what your indicating.

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 07, 2011 3:45 pm

just carl wrote:I've mentioned this previously. Why not have a second photo with arrows, pointers or something to indicate what the discussion is concerned with. It's nice for the ones posting the photo since they already know what is what, but for the average person, much is lost in the unknown. By that I mean many of us do not know what your indicating.
Some images are annotated. It all depends on what the author of the image has prepared. Since the images come from all different sources, anything goes. Occasionally, folks on this forum have produced annotated versions of other people's images. Feel free! <g>
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 07, 2011 3:46 pm

jasonbetska wrote:Could the waterfall nebula actually be a wormhole.
No chance at all.
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Ann » Mon Nov 07, 2011 4:34 pm

This is indeed a supremely beautiful nebula, and the picture is fantastically detailed.
Image
Central "twisters" in the Lagoon Nebula.
Credit: A. Caulet (ST-ECF, ESA), NASA.
In the "heart" of the Sharpless 2-106 nebula, right next to the extremely reddened massive central star, we can see a dusty "twister". Its shape reminds me of the center of the Lagoon Nebula, where a massive star is also being born.

I'm wondering about the bright blue star which is seen in today's APOD. What star is that? As I checked out Sharpless 2-106 with my software, the only star that seemed
to be, possibly, sufficiently nearby, was TYC 2697 286. It is a tenth magnitude star, whose color index suggests a G-type star (or a reddened star of a hotter spectral class). Could this be the bright star that we see in today's APOD?

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Last edited by Ann on Mon Nov 07, 2011 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by bystander » Mon Nov 07, 2011 4:55 pm

Ann wrote:Central "twisters" in the Lagoon Nebula. Image by Hubble
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap990925.html
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 07, 2011 5:39 pm

Ann wrote:I'm wondering about the bright blue star which is seen in today's APOD. What star is that? As I checked out Sharpless 2-106 with my software, the only star that seemed to be, possibly, sufficiently nearby, was TYC 2697 286. It is a tenth magnitude star, whose color index suggests a G-type star (or a reddened star of a hotter spectral class). Could this be the bright star that we see in today's APOD?
That is the one, AKA BD+36 4078, mb=11.02, mv=10.39.
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Wolf kotenberg

Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Wolf kotenberg » Mon Nov 07, 2011 8:26 pm

fantastic ! is it possible this star will crank up the rpm's ( some kind of yet undiscovered force ? ) and turn this hourglass shape into a spiral galaxy ? Much like a mixer does to eggs .

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Boomer12k » Mon Nov 07, 2011 8:29 pm

AWESOME!

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Nov 07, 2011 9:44 pm

Wolf kotenberg wrote:fantastic ! is it possible this star will crank up the rpm's ( some kind of yet undiscovered force ? ) and turn this hourglass shape into a spiral galaxy ? Much like a mixer does to eggs .
A spiral galaxy has billions of times the mass of this little nebula. You could no more turn the nebula into a galaxy than you could mix a single egg into an omelet the size of Texas!
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by jeffryc » Mon Nov 07, 2011 11:09 pm

there should be a link to the rolling stones "2000 light years from home"

George5

Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by George5 » Tue Nov 08, 2011 12:50 am

Can we stop having those distortion effects like star filters which give those spikes coming out of the bright stars and ruining the realistic effect? Also over saturated colors, over use of sharpening filters etc. Just a really hi res realism is best, a little color ok. Please? These APOD are starting to look like point and shoots by amateurs with a trigger finger in photoshop.

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by NGC3314 » Tue Nov 08, 2011 3:05 am

George5 wrote:Can we stop having those distortion effects like star filters which give those spikes coming out of the bright stars and ruining the realistic effect?
The causes of those effects are commonly known as reflecting telescopes. Deconvolution processing would be required to remove this effect.

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Ann » Tue Nov 08, 2011 3:48 am

Chris Peterson wrote:
Wolf kotenberg wrote:fantastic ! is it possible this star will crank up the rpm's ( some kind of yet undiscovered force ? ) and turn this hourglass shape into a spiral galaxy ? Much like a mixer does to eggs .
A spiral galaxy has billions of times the mass of this little nebula. You could no more turn the nebula into a galaxy than you could mix a single egg into an omelet the size of Texas!
Image
You couldn't possibly turn this nebula into a spiral galaxy, but if the central star here gets to be massive enough, and if it gets to have a massive companion, then the two stars could conceivably create a spiral nebula.
Image
This spiral nebula is produced by two hot massive stars. You can see how it works here. Both stars, the WR star and its OB star companion, produce strong winds, but the wind from the WR star is stronger. Where the two winds meet you get a shock front, and copious amounts of dust are formed here. The "zone of dust formation" follows the motion of the OB star in its orbit around the center of mass of this binary, so the dust formation will move around. The dust is basically constrained to the orbital plane of the two stars, where it is spread outwards.

Check out this page, where the spiral dust nebula around WR 104 is compared with a lawnsprinkler! :mrgreen:

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by neptunium » Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:15 am

Wow! What a stunning image! :)

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:27 am

George5 wrote:Can we stop having those distortion effects like star filters which give those spikes coming out of the bright stars and ruining the realistic effect?
While a few imagers make the conscious choice to mask their refractors in order to produce diffraction spikes, in the vast majority of cases they are the inevitable product of the type of optics used to product the image. That is, they are fundamentally part of the data collected, and there is no way to remove them without actually corrupting that data.
Also over saturated colors, over use of sharpening filters etc. Just a really hi res realism is best, a little color ok. Please? These APOD are starting to look like point and shoots by amateurs with a trigger finger in photoshop.
Since none of these images resemble anything that can be seen visually, the choice of colors is dictated by some combination of aesthetic intent and the desire to make as much structure visible as possible. That's a choice that each imager has to make for himself. The most aesthetically pleasing astroimages I've ever seen are all in black and white, and I only image in black and white myself- for that reason.
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Beyond » Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:53 am

Chris Peterson wrote:The most aesthetically pleasing astroimages I've ever seen are all in black and white, and I only image in black and white myself- for that reason.
Ah-HA :!: That's why you changed to Abominable Snowman. Black & white. White fur & black palms and pads on feet. Living color :!: :mrgreen:
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Indigo_Sunrise » Tue Nov 08, 2011 11:56 am

Beyond wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:The most aesthetically pleasing astroimages I've ever seen are all in black and white, and I only image in black and white myself- for that reason.
Ah-HA :!: That's why you changed to Abominable Snowman. Black & white. White fur & black palms and pads on feet. Living color :!: :mrgreen:
And I thought it was because he's a no-nonsense (bordering on cantankerous) man that lives where there is rather a large amount of snow......


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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Beyond » Tue Nov 08, 2011 12:31 pm

The snow is only seasonal. Abominable is forever :!: :mrgreen:
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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Wolf kotenberg » Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:39 pm

A spiral galaxy has billions of times the mass of this little nebula. You could no more turn the nebula into a galaxy than you could mix a single egg into an omelet the size of Texas!

wait a minute, the Big Bang started out smaller than Texas...and look what happened, still expanding, er , accelerating outwards, like the Big Bang is still banging away.

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Re: APOD: Star Forming Region S106 (2011 Nov 07)

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:50 pm

Wolf kotenberg wrote:wait a minute, the Big Bang started out smaller than Texas...and look what happened, still expanding, er , accelerating outwards, like the Big Bang is still banging away.
But the Universe started out with the same mass (or energy if you prefer) at the moment of the Big Bang as it has today. There isn't enough mass (or energy) in the nebula to create a galaxy. You could spread the nebula into something the size of a spiral galaxy, but the material density would be too low to detect- let alone to form billions of stars.
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