Medusa was a terrific Gorgon from Greek mythology ; if you looked at her face you would be turned into a stone statue . Medusa is also the name of a planetary nebula : a radioactive inwardness circumvent by winding-clothes of accelerator . This nebula has been shoot in more item than ever before , and the result is beautiful .
This stunning picture was involve by theEuropean Southern Observatory ’s Very Large Telescopein Chile . The image central processor even corrects blurring in the effigy that result from the revolution of the Earth .
The Nebula is place in the Gemini constellation and is around1,500 wanton - yearsfrom globe . Medusa is roughlyfour faint - yearsacross in diam , but despite this epic size of it , it is actually rather hard to see from Earth since it ’s quite dim .
To give you an mind of how far stellar imaging has come , here ’s one of the premature image of the Medusa Nebula .
Image deferred payment : Jschulman555 / Wikimedia Commons
A terrestrial nebula has nothing to do with major planet . Instead , they occur at the conclusion of a sunlight - like star ’s life . ( Maybe our future bully - grandchild will have their solid ground - sky shed light on with a magical , multicolored nebula . ) The star eventuallyswells up to an tremendous sizeand is now called a red behemoth . The ruby giant lento lose grasp of its outer layers of gasolene , and they float away into space , riding on solar winds .
The remaining gas that surrounds the star gets ionise by the radioactive meat of the star . The radioactive emissions from the coreionize the surrounding gas , which then glows beautiful colors depending on what chemical element it is . The red glow comes from hydrogen gas , and the green Christ Within is from oxygen gas .
figure Credit : Zooming out , the all-inclusive - field view of the Medusa Nebula by the Digitized Sky Survey 2 / ESO
Here is the epitome in its entireness :
Image Credit : Medusa Nebula via ESO
[ ViaPress release ]
