APOD: Dust Pillar of the Carina Nebula (2010 Apr 26)

[APOD Robot]

Dust Pillar of the Carina Nebula

Explanation: Inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it. The monster, on the right, is actually an inanimate pillar of gas and dust that measures over a light year in length. The star, not itself visible through the opaque dust, is bursting out partly by ejecting energetic beams of particles. Similar epic battles are being waged all over the star-forming Carina Nebula. The stars will win in the end, destroying their pillars of creation over the next 100,000 years, and resulting in a new open cluster of stars. The pink dots around the image are newly formed stars that have already been freed from their birth monster. The above image was released last week in commemoration of the Hubble Space Telescopes 20th year of operation. The technical name for the stellar jets are Herbig-Haro objects. How a star creates Herbig-Haro jets is an ongoing topic of research, but it likely involves an accretion disk swirling around a central star. A second impressive Herbig-Haro jet occurs diagonally near the image center.

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[bystander]

Hubble: Mystic Mountain
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 29&t=19176

[Guest]

Inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it. The monster, on the right, is actually an inanimate pillar of gas and dust that measures over a light year in length. The star, not itself visible through the opaque dust, is bursting out partly by ejecting energetic beams of particles. Similar epic battles are being waged all over the star-forming Carina Nebula. The stars will win in the end, destroying their pillars of creation over the next 100,000 years, and resulting in a new open cluster of stars.

According to some recent research (link below) this may not be completely so.

American Museum of Natural History. "Mystery Solved: Why Nebulae Around Massive Stars Don't Disappear." ScienceDaily 21 April 2010. 25 April 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101655.htm.

[ersteller]

Hallo
does anybody know the mass (better: the density) of such dust pillars?
Thank you

[bystander]

According to some recent research (link below) this may not be completely so.

American Museum of Natural History. "Mystery Solved: Why Nebulae Around Massive Stars Don't Disappear."

AMNH: Nebulae around stars with girth flicker like candles
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 31&t=18739

I think that pertains to nebula around single super massive stars, not to a star forming region as pictured.

• 
  Comparison views of ‘Mystic Mountain’
  Hubble’s WFC3 observed the pillar in February–March 2010.
  (NASA/ESA/M. Livio & Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI))

These two images of a pillar of star birth, three light-years high, demonstrate how observations taken in visible and infrared light by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveal dramatically different and complementary views of an object. The pair of images demonstrates how Hubble’s new panchromatic view of the Universe shows striking differences between visible and infrared wavelengths. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, some 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. The images mark the 20th anniversary of Hubble’s launch and deployment into orbit around Earth.

[Left] This visible-light view shows how scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-hot newborn stars in the nebula are shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. Infant stars buried inside fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks. Streamers of hot ionised gas can be seen flowing from the ridges of the structure, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around it. The dense parts of the pillar are resisting being eroded by radiation. The colours in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green) and sulphur (red).

[Right] This near-infrared image shows a myriad of stars behind the gaseous veil of the nebula's background wall of hydrogen, laced with dust. The foreground pillar becomes semi-transparent because infrared light from the background stars penetrates much of the dust. A few stars inside the pillar also become visible. Representative colours are assigned to three different infrared wavelength ranges.

[workgazer]

Why does this whole lump of gas not collapse in to one huge star?

[Astronut]

WHOA!!!! Thats one-hell-a-va dust bunny!! we're going to need a BIGGER Hoover!!!

[neufer]

Why does this whole lump of gas not collapse in to one huge star?

In the 1940's scientists started bringing small lumps of U-235 together to make a nuclear reactor.
Then they brought larger lumps of U-235 together to make a nuclear bomb.

It is the same with hydrogen.

Small lumps of hydrogen can condense to make a star but when
large lumps of hydrogen try to condense they just blow themselves apart.

The largest stable stars contain no more than about 100 solar masses.

[Chris Peterson]

Why does this whole lump of gas not collapse in to one huge star?

As the cloud collapses, stars form locally. The radiation pressure from those stars more than overcomes the self-gravitation of the cloud. Basically, winds from the stars blow the dust back outwards. Not all the material in these clouds becomes a star, because once a certain number of stars are formed, the remaining dust is blown away.

[Clinker]

I see all kinds of animals in that image.
Let's see:
A rearing dinosaur with horns.
A horse and rider.
2 Hippopotami.
A bear.
A lioness.
A possible terrapin.
A bat face.
A pollywog.
And a few others I couldn't name.

Clink

[Stan Flouride]

If you were inside these pillars would you even be able to tell?

I always think back to "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" when Kirk hides the Enterprise inside a nebula and have wondered whether that was even a real possibility.

At these dimensions it just seem plausible.

Thanks for any answers
Stan

stanflouride@yahoo.com

[Chris Peterson]

If you were inside these pillars would you even be able to tell? I always think back to "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" when Kirk hides the Enterprise inside a nebula and have wondered whether that was even a real possibility.

You'd be able to tell- the optical depth is pretty shallow. So mostly you'd have a star-free sky. But it wouldn't be anything like the way sci-fi movies show it, which is basically like dogfighters hiding in clouds. You could only hide if your hunter was separated by many astronomical units. Over the sort of range you see in Star Trek- thousands of kilometers- space would still be optically transparent.

[Chappy]

I see all kinds of animals in that image.
Let's see:
A rearing dinosaur with horns.
A horse and rider.
2 Hippopotami.
A bear.
A lioness.
A possible terrapin.
A bat face.
A pollywog.
And a few others I couldn't name.

Clink

I saw a number of things as well, including the bear head.
But the one that instantly caught my eye as I scanned thru at a magnified image was the witch lady, grabbing at a star.
Clearly visible is the face, surrounded by a shock of red curly hair, outlined in a light halo. And, as can be seen, her right hand is grasping at a star...
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/451/ ... 3554pm.jpg

[DavidLeodis]

It's another great and awesome image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The "monster" in the explanation brings up the trailer to a 1953 film 'Robot Monster'. Well worth seeing for the 1½ minutes it lasts but be prepared to be scared out of your wits. I love it. It's so

[arproduction]

Can anyone else see the outline of three cats or lions? Look closely......

[owlice]

The "monster" in the explanation brings up the trailer to a 1953 film 'Robot Monster'. Well worth seeing for the 1½ minutes it lasts but be prepared to be scared out of your wits. I love it. It's so

Oh, that was hilarious!!

[neufer]

<<The first Herbig–Haro object was observed in the late 19th century by Burnham, when he looked at the star T Tauri with the 36-inch (910 mm) refracting telescope at Lick Observatory and noted a small patch of nebulosity nearby. However, it was catalogued merely as an emission nebula, later becoming known as Burnham's Nebula, and was not recognised as a distinct class of object. However, T Tauri was found to be a very young and variable star, and is the prototype of the class of similar objects known as T Tauri stars which have yet to reach a state of hydrostatic equilibrium between gravitational collapse and energy generation through nuclear fusion at their centres.

• 

Fifty years after Burnham's discovery, several similar nebulae were discovered which were so small as to be almost star-like in appearance. Both Haro and Herbig made independent observations of several of these objects during the 1940s. Herbig also looked at Burnham's Nebula and found that it displayed an unusual electromagnetic spectrum, with prominent emission lines of hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen. Haro found that all the objects of this type were invisible in infrared light.

Following their independent discoveries, Herbig and Haro met at an astronomy conference in Tucson, Arizona. Herbig had initially paid little attention to the objects he had discovered, being primarily concerned with the nearby stars, but on hearing Haro's findings he carried out more detailed studies of them. The [Armenian] astronomer Viktor Ambartsumian gave the objects their name, and based on their occurrence near young stars (a few hundred thousand years old), suggested that they might represent an early stage in the formation of T Tauri stars.>>

<<Viktor Ambartsumian was born to an Armenian family in Tbilisi in 1908. His father was the philologist and writer Hamazasp Amabartsumian, the translator of Homer’s Iliad into Armenian. In 1926 Victor published his first scientific article, devoted to sun jets. In 1939–1941 Amabartsumian was the director of the Leningrad University Observatory. The scientific laboratories of the University were evacuated in 1941 to remote Elabuga (Tatarstan) where Ambartsumian spent four years directing the work of the refugee laboratories. V. A. Amabartsumian died in August 1996 in Byurakan and is buried next to the Grand Telescope Tower.>>

[Chappy]

Can anyone else see the outline of three cats or lions? Look closely......

So many things can be envisioned from something like this, it's fun to look thru the complexity of these clouds and see what comes to mind.
It's simply amazing that we can get to see these structures at all, we are the first generation that has the ability to see and study what's wayyyy out there, it's truly mind boggling.
I think that every one of us here, dreams about being able to see something like this up close and in person...now that would be an experience! (if it could be done without being instantly irradiated )

The day Hubble is sent it's final shut down & return command, is going to be a very sad day indeed. True "pioneers" are few and far between, and HST has arguably been one of humankinds' most important pioneers.

Dave