File:Eta Carinae - Observations in UV Light Uncover Magnesium Embedded in Warm Gas.png

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Eta Carinae: Observations in UV Light Uncover Magnesium Embedded in Warm Gas

Summary[edit]

Description
English: Giant Star Yields New Clues About Turbulent Life

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the giant, petulant star Eta Carinae is yielding new surprises.

Telescopes such as Hubble have monitored the super-massive star for more than two decades. The star, the largest member of a double-star system, has been prone to violent outbursts, including an episode in the 1840s during which ejected material formed the bipolar bubbles seen here.

Now, using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to probe the nebula in ultraviolet light, astronomers have uncovered the glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue) in places they had not seen it before. The luminous magnesium resides in the space between the dusty bipolar bubbles and the outer shock-heated nitrogen-rich filaments (shown in red).

The streaks visible in the blue region outside the lower-left lobe are a striking feature in the image. These streaks are created when the star's light rays poke through the dust clumps scattered along the bubble's surface. Wherever the ultraviolet light strikes the dense dust, it leaves a long, thin shadow that extends beyond the lobe into the surrounding gas.

Eta Carinae resides 7,500 light-years away.
Date March 2018 and July 2018
Source https://hubblesite.org/image/4505/gallery (image link)
Author NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona), and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute)
This image or video was catalogued by one of the centers of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: STScI-2019-18.

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Licensing[edit]

Public domain This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use.
The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org.
For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag.

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current18:48, 22 November 2019Thumbnail for version as of 18:48, 22 November 20192,000 × 2,000 (4.38 MB)Killarnee (talk | contribs)User created page with UploadWizard

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