Starship Asterisk*

NGC 6188: Dragons of Ara

Explanation: Do dragons fight on the altar of the sky? Although it might appear that way, these dragons are illusions made of thin gas and dust. The emission nebula NGC 6188, home to the glowing clouds, is found about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud, unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara (the Altar). Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed in that region only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions from previous generations of massive stars, that swept up and compressed the molecular gas. This impressively detailed image spans over 2 degrees (four full Moons), corresponding to over 150 light years at the estimated distance of NGC 6188.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

Me being me, I'll leave the discussion of the APOD to the rest of you, while I go Oohh! and Aahh! over the magnificent O-type stars of Cluster NGC 6193, the ionizing stars of the Dragons of Ara.

Wikipedia wrote about HD 150136 and cluster NGC 6193:

All three (four, including HD 150135) of the brightest stars are massive luminous O class main sequence stars, 27 to 54 times as massive as the Sun. They are around 10 times the size of the Sun, but 6-8 times hotter and each is over 100,000 times as luminous. The primary star is the closest O3 star to Earth, 46,500 K, visually 18,000 times as bright as the sun, but because of its high temperature it is around three quarters of a million times more luminous including all wavelengths.

Let's look at how the gorgeous HD 150136 (and friends) sculpts and ionizes it surroundings in glorious technicolor!



And finally, let's look at a picture that isn't an RGB image, but it's gorgeous anyway:


Gorgeous!!

Ann

I assume the stars were digitally removed in this image? When we look at the image at full resolution, there are lots of small faint little disks.

Alex

[unrelated to Astronomy] Before reading the title, the first thing this image brought to mind was Michelangelo's famous depiction of Adam and God in the Sistine Chapel:

so beautiful there are no words to describe!

alex555 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 7:30 am I assume the stars were digitally removed in this image? When we look at the image at full resolution, there are lots of small faint little disks.

Alex

Yes - A direct comparison with the almost equivalent image from wikpedia

Todays image


Wikipedia image


makes it very obvious that the stars have been removed.

That also explains some of the other artefacts on the full resolution image (e.g. faint diffraction cross hairs).

I can see that removing the stars allows better appreciation of the shapes, but it also seems to remove some of the grandeur and sense of scale.

JimB wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 3:50 pm

alex555 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 7:30 am I assume the stars were digitally removed in this image? When we look at the image at full resolution, there are lots of small faint little disks.

Alex

Yes - A direct comparison with the almost equivalent image from wikpedia

Todays image
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2406/A ... r_4728.jpg

Wikipedia image
NGC_6188_Los_Dragones_de_Ara_en_Paleta_Hubble.jpg


makes it very obvious that the stars have been removed.

That also explains some of the other artefacts on the full resolution image (e.g. faint diffraction cross hairs).

I can see that removing the stars allows better appreciation of the shapes, but it also seems to remove some of the grandeur and sense of scale.

And even better, the last link in the description is to this video showing a morphing of the nebula into the Michelangelo fresco !


[ EDIT: woops - I meant to reply to Tao who wrote:

tao wrote:[unrelated to Astronomy] Before reading the title, the first thing this image brought to mind was Michelangelo's famous depiction of Adam and God in the Sistine Chapel:

Also, I thought I could delete a past message of mine, but that option seems not to be available. Was it ever? ]

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 4:35 pm
Also, I thought I could delete a past message of mine, but that option seems not to be available. Was it ever?

If it is the last message in a thread, you can delete it. If someone else has posted since you posted the message, you can no longer delete the message.

bystander wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 11:19 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 4:35 pm
Also, I thought I could delete a past message of mine, but that option seems not to be available. Was it ever?

If it is the last message in a thread, you can delete it. If someone else has posted since you posted the message, you can no longer delete the message.

Ok, thanks. I could see being unable to delete a message if someone specifically quoted that message, but I would have thought that even if someone added to the thread, that alone wouldn’t prevent deletion. But I guess I could argue it either way.