Starship Asterisk*

Curious dark nebula seen as never before

Just as René Magritte wrote “This is not a pipe” on his famous painting, this is also not a pipe. It is however a picture of part of a vast dark cloud of interstellar dust called the Pipe Nebula. This new and very detailed image of what is also known as Barnard 59 was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. By coincidence this image is appearing on the 45th anniversary of the painter’s death.

The Pipe Nebula is a prime example of a dark nebula. Originally, astronomers believed these were areas in space where there were no stars. But it was later discovered that dark nebulae actually consist of clouds of interstellar dust so thick it can block out the light from the stars beyond. The Pipe Nebula appears silhouetted against the rich star clouds close to the centre of the Milky Way in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer).

Barnard 59 forms the mouthpiece of the Pipe Nebula and is the subject of this new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. This strange and complex dark nebula lies about 600–700 light-years away from Earth.

The nebula is named after the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard who was the first to systematically record dark nebulae using long-exposure photography and one of those who recognised their dusty nature. Barnard catalogued a total of 370 dark nebulae all over the sky. A self-made man, he bought his first house with the prize money from discovering several comets. Barnard was an extraordinary observer with exceptional eyesight who made contributions in many fields of astronomy in the late 19th and early 20th century.

At first glance, your attention is most likely drawn to the centre of the image where dark twisting clouds look a little like the legs of a vast spider stretched across a web of stars. However, after a few moments you will begin to notice several finer details. Foggy, smoky shapes in the middle of the darkness are lit up by new stars that are forming. Star formation is common within regions that contain dense, molecular clouds, such as in dark nebulae. The dust and gas will clump together under the influence of gravity and more and more material will be attracted until the star is formed. However, compared to similar regions, the Barnard 59 region is undergoing relatively little star formation and still has a great deal of dust.

If you look carefully you may also be able to spot more than a dozen tiny blue, green and red strips scattered across the picture. These are asteroids, chunks of rock and metal a few kilometres across that are orbiting the Sun. The majority lie in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Barnard 59 is about ten million times further away from the Earth than these tiny objects.

And finally, as you take in this richly textured tapestry of celestial objects, consider for a moment that when you look up at this region of sky from Earth you would be able to fit this entire image under your thumb held at arms-length despite it being about six light-years across at the distance of Barnard 59.

Credit: ESO

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Click to play embedded YouTube video.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dottle wrote:
<<Dottle is the wet and sour-smelling mass of unburned tobacco found at the bottom of a tobacco pipe. The word is a corruption of 'dossil', which is derived from the Old French 'dosil', meaning a spigot or plug in a vessel, but by the early nineteenth century the term had become associated with pipe smoking. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock had a habit of drying out all the dottles from the day's pipes on a corner of his mantelpiece to be smoked the following morning.

Dottle is produced by a combination of two factors: first the smoker is a "wet smoker", that is, he pushes a considerable amount of saliva down the stem and into the bowl, and second the tobacco being smoked is excessively moist. Puffing too fast can also be a factor depending on the humidity of the tobacco. The foul liquid that collects at the bottom of a pipe results in gurgling and can be accidentally sucked up. Pushing a pipe cleaner down the stem can remedy this problem to a point.

[b][color=#0000FF]A Peterson Dry System Pipe cutaway[/color][/b]

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Dottles are generally considered troublesome because they lessen the time one may spend smoking a bowl. Dottles can also give a sour taste to the smoke as it is approached by the hot ember. If dottle is not promptly removed after smoking, the pipe may eventually give a foul taste to any tobacco smoked in it. When this happens, pipe sweetening is required. Some pipes are designed to specifically lessen or prevent the formation of dottle and excessive moisture. The most common are the calabash pipe and the "Dry System" pipes made by Peterson.>>