by Ann » Fri Aug 26, 2011 3:32 am
This is a beautiful APOD. As for the color of the gases, we couldn't see them, because the gases are far too tenuous. I like alter-ego's comparison with the Gum Nebula.
We could, however, detect a blue tinge in the light from the brightest star, if we were at just the right distance from it. The right distance would be where the star is bright enough to stimulate the color response of our retinas, but not so bright that it was uncomfortable to look at.
The bright central star, HD 5005, is a very hot star of spectral class O5.5. It is reddened by the gases surrounding it, but still it looks relatively blue, with an apparent color index of 0.101. If we could assess its (apparent) color at all, it would look much bluer than it does in today's APOD, where the color of the star is affected by the narrowband imaging.
Ann
This is a beautiful APOD. As for the color of the gases, we couldn't see them, because the gases are far too tenuous. I like alter-ego's comparison with the Gum Nebula.
We could, however, detect a blue tinge in the light from the brightest star, if we were at just the right distance from it. The right distance would be where the star is bright enough to stimulate the color response of our retinas, but not so bright that it was uncomfortable to look at.
The bright central star, HD 5005, is a very hot star of spectral class O5.5. It is reddened by the gases surrounding it, but still it looks relatively blue, with an apparent color index of 0.101. If we could assess its (apparent) color at all, it would look much bluer than it does in today's APOD, where the color of the star is affected by the narrowband imaging.
Ann