Starship Asterisk*

by **neufer** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:12 pm

: [size=135][color=#0000FF]The Homunculus Nebula from an 1841 Eta Carinae explosion.[/color][/size]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_Nebula wrote:
<<The Homunculus Nebula is an emission nebula surrounding the massive star system Eta Carinae. The nebula is embedded within the much larger Eta Carinae Nebula, an ionized hydrogen (H II) region. The Homunculus (from the Latin meaning Little Man) is believed to have been ejected in an enormous outburst from Eta Carinae. Light from this event reached Earth in 1841, creating a brightening event in the night sky which was visible from the Earth's surface at the time. During the event (as seen from Earth) Eta Carinae briefly became the second-brightest star in the sky, after Sirius; but the ejected gas and dust have since obscured much of its light.>>

I wonder if 800 years from now the Homunculus Nebula in the Eta Carinae Nebula will resemble Orion "bullets" in the Orion Nebula.

by **alter-ego** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 4:38 am

Chris Peterson wrote:
Drifting wrote:So, are the telescope's five laser-generated stars visible in this image of the Orion Bullets??? If so it would be nice to know where in the image they are!
I doubt it. The laser stimulates a specific narrow wavelength, which is filtered out by the correction optics. That light doesn't make it to the imaging camera. Presumably, the reference stars are distributed in the field- probably one in the center and the others in the quadrants, but more optimal configurations might be possible.

: 5-pt Locations and Sizes

Yes, the light is filtered and therefore not visible to GeMS, but other facilities are / can operate sensitive to the sodium line (589nm). There are protocols that define how, when and where the guides stars can be used.

The particular 5-star foot print and sizes are shown in the picture. Note the FoV is the same size as the APOD. I believe they limit the image / guide star separation to something like 25 arcsec.

by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 4:17 am

Chappy wrote:There is one star at the bottom left of this image (2nd star from left edge right at the bottom) that appears to have two jets of material, perfectly perpendicular to the star. These appear to be very similar in looks to x-ray images of jets emanating from galactic central regions. Is this just a chance overlay of foreground (or background) bullet material on an unrelated star? Must be otherwise I'm sure they would have been mentioned something about it..wouldn't they?

Looks to me like a shock front in the surrounding gas, not a jet.

by **Chappy** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 3:50 am

There is one star at the bottom left of this image (2nd star from left edge right at the bottom) that appears to have two jets of material, perfectly perpendicular to the star. These appear to be very similar in looks to x-ray images of jets emanating from galactic central regions. Is this just a chance overlay of foreground (or background) bullet material on an unrelated star? Must be otherwise I'm sure they would have been mentioned something about it..wouldn't they?

by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 12:36 am

Drifting wrote:So, are the telescope's five laser-generated stars visible in this image of the Orion Bullets??? If so it would be nice to know where in the image they are!

I doubt it. The laser stimulates a specific narrow wavelength, which is filtered out by the correction optics. That light doesn't make it to the imaging camera. Presumably, the reference stars are distributed in the field- probably one in the center and the others in the quadrants, but more optimal configurations might be possible.

by **Drifting** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 12:07 am

So, are the telescope's five laser-generated stars visible in this image of the Orion Bullets??? If so it would be nice to know where in the image they are!

by **Beyond** » Sat Jan 12, 2013 11:19 pm

And... an experienced optimist could end up being very pessimistic about everything, as a whole.

by **Ann** » Sat Jan 12, 2013 6:44 am

Boomer12k wrote:alter-ego: Thanks for the photo comparisons and the wider field one.

And an Optimist could be an experienced Pessimist. It depends on the things you are learning.

:---[===] *

I agree with Boomer12k on both counts.

Anyway, alter-ego: Do keep up your gracious service to everyone here at Starship Asterisk*, by showing us photo comparisons and wider field images so that we can get a better idea of what and where the APOD in question is! (Not every day, of course, goodness me, but now and again!) Thank you so much!

Ann

by **alter-ego** » Sat Jan 12, 2013 5:03 am

Boomer12k wrote:alter-ego: Thanks for the photo comparisons and the wider field one.

You are very welcome.

And an Optimist could be an experienced Pessimist. It depends on the things you are learning.

Now that's optimistic!

by **Boomer12k** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 11:27 pm

alter-ego: Thanks for the photo comparisons and the wider field one.

And an Optimist could be an experienced Pessimist. It depends on the things you are learning.

:---[===] *

by **alter-ego** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 7:43 am

geckzilla wrote: No, it's a smooth, arc-shaped structure that is pointing or moving in a different direction than the rest of the bullets. The texture is so different from the rest of the clouds that I thought it might not really be there.

Chris Peterson wrote:
geckzilla wrote:I'm not familiar with the possible lighting artifacts for this telescope. Is the shockwave-like structure on the left near the large blue cone of material really there or is it some kind of anomaly?
Other than the glow around the bright stars (scatter), and the inherent resolution limit imposed by diffraction, there appear to be no visual imaging artifacts of any kind in this image.

Below is a mosaic of the central region of the Orion Nebula obtained with the ESO VLT (ISAAC) at the Paranal Obs. I've added a yellow box to outline the APOD FoV. I clipped this region out and made the overlay to the right. Other than some slight distortion and apparent filtering differences, the overlay shows there are indeed no artifacts or anomalies (two different images, two different telescopes). This comparison does highlight the amazing image quality GeMS can achieve.

: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ESO-M42-Phot-03a-01.jpg][color=#800040][size=150]Paranal VLT, ISAAC - Credit ESO[/size][/color][/url]

: Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

by **Chris Peterson** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:23 am

Sinan İpek wrote:But why do we all see so many nursery nebulae around us? The newborn stars in them all seem to go together.

They are together. They are forming in regions where they and the surrounding gas and dust are loosely bound gravitationally. Over a few million years, those regions dissipate and their constituent stars drift apart.

by **Sinan İpek** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:11 am

Chris Peterson wrote: We and our progenitors have been in different galactic orbits for 5 billion years.

Thanks! This has perplexed my mind for so many years.
To summarize, our progenitor star(s) have been all dead for at least 5 billion years. They might have been hundreds of light years away when they exploded. They all contributed interstellar cloud. They aren't even gravitationally bound to our system. Wherebouts of them unknown. We can find a blackhole or a neutron star in our neighborhood but we cannot say that they are our progenitors. Thanks.
But why do we all see so many nursery nebulae around us? The newborn stars in them all seem to go together.

by **Chris Peterson** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:00 am

Sinan İpek wrote:1. Are 5 billion years so many for us to backtrack our neighboring stars?

Yes. This is something on the order of 25 full rotations of the galaxy- more than enough to scramble things beyond even the theoretical ability to reconstruct positions.

2. Isn't there any chance we hava a blackhole or a neutron star in our neighborhood? Perhaps, they would have been the remnants of our grandpa stars? Can't we deduce anything from them?

We may have such things fairly nearby. But there's no reason to think they would be progenitors of the Sun. The only things that can stay local are those which are gravitationally bound to us (and there are no such objects). We and our progenitors have been in different galactic orbits for 5 billion years.

by **saturno2** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:58 pm

I agree with orin Stepanek, I see this image as fireworks, too.
I think that this picture with spectacular fireworks given the start
of the new cycle in the Long Count Calendar.....

by **Sinan İpek** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:43 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: They would all be black holes or neutron stars, which are difficult to detect in any case.

1. Are 5 billion years so many for us to backtrack our neighboring stars?
2. Isn't there any chance we hava a blackhole or a neutron star in our neighborhood? Perhaps, they would have been the remnants of our grandpa stars? Can't we deduce anything from them?

by **Chris Peterson** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:00 pm

Sinan İpek wrote:So you think we cannot distinguish Sol's grandpa star(s) from the Milkyway's commonwealth stars?

They would all be black holes or neutron stars, which are difficult to detect in any case. And there's no way to work backwards that far and figure out where our parent stars' remnants might even be.

by **Sinan İpek** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:44 pm

BMAONE23 wrote:I would imagine that the first/second generation star(s) would have met their demise over 5 billion yrars ago.

So you think we cannot distinguish Sol's grandpa star(s) from the Milkyway's commonwealth stars?

by **BMAONE23** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:36 pm

I would imagine that the first/second generation star(s) would have met their demise over 5 billion yrars ago. The pressure of their outbursts would have forced ambient gas clouds to condence over a space of hundreds of light years distance. We could be at the mid-point of 4 or 5 such stellar deaths that happened some 2 or 3 hundred light years distance from us. Although the same process can and does happed with only a single stellar death and a sufficient ammount of gas to compress.

by **Sinan İpek** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:29 pm

We know that Sol is either a second or a third generation star, because it has some elements other than hydrogen and helium in it. But where is the first generation star out of whose remnants Sol came into being? It should have become either an blackhole or a neutron star. Doesn't that mean there should have been some remnants of it in the neighborhood of Sol? I mean, there should have been either a blackhole or a neutron star near Sol. But where is it? It should be near. And our grandpa star must have some grandchildren other than Sol. Where are Sol's cousins? Can we find them by investigating the composition of the stars near Sol?

by **Boomer12k** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:16 pm

Reminds me of the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. Though a totally different phenomena and cause, of course. A stellar "Shotgun blast", pellets firing out into space. Wonder what they are aiming at?
They are iron, so they are dense, so they would have some gravity, so they would tend to amass material and gas as they continue to travel, so the material would collect and collapse, eventually possibly creating a star? The Sun is said to be a "Third Generation Star", I wonder if THIS process is how the Sun got some of its iron and how it helped it to become a star. I wonder if these Iron Bullets then hit a Molecular Cloud and HELPED seed it for star formation.

We maybe looking at STAR SEEDS.

Got to get me an infrared setup for my 10inch Meade.

:---[===] *

by **orin stepanek** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:05 pm

Nicely done picture; like fireworks!

and an old smiley; for the geezer!

by **Jebroubien** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 8:50 pm

This has to be the most detailed zoomed in picture of this star formation I have ever seen. GOGO techonolgy adavances!

by **rstevenson** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:20 pm

alter-ego wrote:
geckzilla wrote:I'm not familiar with the possible lighting artifacts for this telescope. Is the shockwave-like structure on the left near the large blue cone of material really there or is it some kind of anomaly?
I'm not sure exactly what structure you are referring to, but I can not identify any image anomalies in that vacinity. There is a star just outside the FoV there. Perhaps you are seeing that?

I suspect the reference is to this arc of brownish material.

I think it's just a bit of the gas/dust that happens to look like an arc from our POV.

Rob

by **Psnarf** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 5:55 pm

I don't recall ever seeing ionized iron atoms imaged in infrared before. I know they're at the core of a star before going supernova, fusion of silicon atoms. Wonder where all that iron came from? The supernovae that formed the nebula, perhaps? I had to check my lecture notes, the layers of a pre-supernova star are hydrogen at the surface, helium, carbon, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, and iron at the core. Each layer created from fusion reactions of the lighter layer above it.

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: The Orion Bullets (2013 Jan 10)

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