Explanation: It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dusty stellar nurseries in which they formed. Located in the Carina Nebula and known informally as Mystic Mountain, these pillar's appearance is dominated by the dark dust even though it is composed mostly of clear hydrogen gas. Dust pillars such as these are actually much thinner than air and only appear as mountains due to relatively small amounts of opaque interstellar dust. About 7,500 light-years distant, the featured image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, digitally reprocessed by an industrious amateur, and highlights an interior region of Carina which spans about three light years. Within a few million years, the stars will likely win out completely and the entire dust mountain will be destroyed.
This is one of the classic Hubble telescope images, and in my opinion, it is more interesting than the better-known Pillars of Creation in M16. The dust formations in today's APOD look more dynamic to me. There is apparently a star forming at the very top of the tallest pillar, and its jets seem to be gyrating wildly like a water sprinkler.
I prefer the original Hubble image but this reprocessing is also really nice! I wish I knew the name of the Herbig Haro outflow near the top of the image, I think the description should have mentioned this. The whole Eta Carinae Nebula is HUGE! You can see it in its entirety in this image by Marco Lorenzi.
I wonder why David chose to reverse this image? East-West is now West-East, unless I'm looking at the panorama at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090524.html incorrectly.
starsurfer wrote:I prefer the original Hubble image but this reprocessing is also really nice! I wish I knew the name of the Herbig Haro outflow near the top of the image, I think the description should have mentioned this. The whole Eta Carinae Nebula is HUGE! You can see it in its entirety in this image by Marco Lorenzi.
Any idea why the image was flipped left-right, compared to the one on the Hubble site? (as per Geckzilla's link)
Is it just for aesthetics, or is there a scientific reason for it?
Craine wrote:Any idea why the image was flipped left-right, compared to the one on the Hubble site? (as per Geckzilla's link)
Is it just for aesthetics, or is there a scientific reason for it?
It's how it comes from the telescope. If the person processing the data doesn't flip it, then it ends up like this. Almost everyone flips it. Some people don't. I don't know why. Maybe it's aesthetics. Maybe they don't know better. It bothers a lot of people that they don't flip it to standard orientation, though.
kellogg wrote:Why are some of the stars flared by the lens but not all?
I assume by "flare" you're referring to the diffraction spikes created by the spider assembly that supports the telescope's secondary mirror. They are present on all the stars, but since the spikes are several orders of magnitude dimmer than the stars that produce them, they are only visible (that is, above the noise floor) for a handful of very bright stars. If you took the original data and really stretched the contrast you'd see more of them (at the expense of saturating most of the image). All the stars which show visible spikes in this image are already saturated.
Yes, it can be confusing. Rotation is often arbitrary, but it is extremely rare for professional data to be presented mirrored- that is, any way but east 90° CCW of north. Amateur imagers should always ensure that their images match this convention (which is consistent with looking at the sky unaided). Indeed, some of the professional image processing tools I use pop up warnings if the data is displayed mirrored.
starsurfer wrote:I prefer the original Hubble image but this reprocessing is also really nice! I wish I knew the name of the Herbig Haro outflow near the top of the image, I think the description should have mentioned this. The whole Eta Carinae Nebula is HUGE! You can see it in its entirety in this image by Marco Lorenzi.
The right side jet (when looking at the photo) appears to terminate in a bow shock. Wonderful!
BTW, I had to lookup Herbig-Haro and was surprised to find that Harry Turtledove wrote a short story with this title in 1984.
Mystic Mountain Dust Pillars