APOD: Wide Angle: The Cats Paw Nebula (2010 Apr 21)

[APOD Robot]

Wide Angle: The Cats Paw Nebula

Explanation: Nebulae are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat's Paw Nebula visible in Scorpius. At 5,500 light years distant, Cat's Paw is an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula or NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sun have been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured above, a wide angle, deep field image of the Cat's Paw nebula was culled from the second Digitized Sky Survey.

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[Astronut]

I did not see anything that looked like a cat's paw to me - However, clicking onto one of those two blue circles that have a red spot with a white dot inside - thats COOL !!

[Chris Peterson]

I did not see anything that looked like a cat's paw to me

There are a couple of reasons for that- the very high resolution of the image, and the extreme processing to bring out faint structure. Both are common these days, and explain why the images of so many famous objects look little or nothing like their names would suggest. Those names typically describe what the objects look like visually through a telescope, or how they appeared on film years ago. If you Google the Cat's Paw Nebula, you'll find quite a few images that look a lot more like a cat's paw print than this image does. Of course, they won't show as much detail, either.

[bystander]

On the trail of a cosmic cat
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 29&t=18195

[biddie67]

Thanks for the additional link above ....

[kviers]

Ionized hydrogen would be a proton stripped of its electron. How does such a cloud of positive charge maintain and form under the pressure of all that electromagnetic repulsion?

[Paul Douglas]

Am I correct that all the thousands of points of light are stars in our Milky Way galaxy that we are looking through to see this nebula?

[dduggan47]

I did not see anything that looked like a cat's paw to me

There are a couple of reasons for that- the very high resolution of the image, and the extreme processing to bring out faint structure. Both are common these days, and explain why the images of so many famous objects look little or nothing like their names would suggest. Those names typically describe what the objects look like visually through a telescope, or how they appeared on film years ago. If you Google the Cat's Paw Nebula, you'll find quite a few images that look a lot more like a cat's paw print than this image does. Of course, they won't show as much detail, either.

I can see the cat's paw if I look for it, but what pops out at me is a skull facing left in the picture.

[Jordan]

No known cat? Are you implying the possibility of a cat millions of lightyears long? Because I'd hate to be tasked with cleaning its litter.

[Chris Peterson]

Ionized hydrogen would be a proton stripped of its electron. How does such a cloud of positive charge maintain and form under the pressure of all that electromagnetic repulsion?

There are at least two factors to consider. First, you have gravitational forces holding the cloud together. It isn't just hydrogen, but various other gases and dust, as well. Second, you need to think about what it means to see the emission spectrum of ionized hydrogen. The light is produced when the hydrogen proton recaptures a free electron, and it drops back to a low energy level. The ionization-relaxation cycle has some lifetime- pretty short, I'd guess. At any one instant, only some of the hydrogen atoms are ionized. It is probably not quite correct to think of this as a cloud of ionized hydrogen, as opposed to a cloud of hydrogen that is undergoing ionization and relaxation continuously.

[Ted Judah]

There are two bright stars in this image. Below the one on the right there is an asterism of about 8 stars all in a row. I've never seen such a line-up before. What are the chances for seeing such an asterism as viewed from Earth I wonder?

[owlice]

I was looking at the large image pretty closely last night and noticed a number of asterisms of stars all in a row ranging from 7-9 stars. Once I saw the first one, others started catching my notice.

[bystander]

Am I correct that all the thousands of points of light are stars in our Milky Way galaxy that we are looking through to see this nebula?

Yes, those are stars in the Milky Way between us and the nebula. The Cat's Paw is also in the Milky Way.

What are the chances for seeing such an asterism as viewed from Earth I wonder?

You are seeing it as viewed from Earth.

[orin stepanek]

I did not see anything that looked like a cat's paw to me

I thought it looked like a cat's paw. From the underside; with all the toes showing.