![]() ![]() The Advanced Camera for Surveys images were taken Aug. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 observations were taken Maand June 13, 2005. It is 500,000 times brighter and about 30 to 40 times more massive than the Sun. The star, located 5,000 light-years away, is one of the largest and one of the most luminous evolved stars known. The knots near the center of the image are traveling at 80,400 miles an hour (129,600 kilometers an hour). The prominent arc to the northwest or upper right in the Hubble image is moving at 102,700 miles an hour (165,600 kilometers an hour), and was ejected about 500 years ago. These observations showed that the numerous arcs, loops, and knots were moving at different speeds and in various directions, confirming they were produced from separate events and from different locations on the star. They also compared the ejecta's expansion taken with Hubble six years apart. They measured the velocities of the ejecta from spectra obtained with the Keck 10-meter telescope. Astronomers assembled this picture from separate images taken at three different polarization angles, colored red, green, and blue. ![]() This glittering gathering of stars is the globular cluster NGC 6558, and it was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. To see the polarized light, astronomers used a polarizing filter, which lets through only light vibrating in one direction and blocks out light vibrating in other directions. Hubble Observes a Glittering Gathering of Stars. The dust formed around the star and was driven into space. The light from the star becomes polarized when it is reflected off the dust. The image at right, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, was made with polarizing filters to show how the dust ejected by the star is distributed in three-dimensional space. But through a quirk of nature that tremendously amplifies the star’s feeble glow, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. A 2006 composite image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Telescope shows the chaos of baby stars in the Orion nebula some 1,500 light-years away. Normally, it would be much too faint to view, even with the world’s largest telescopes. This is composite picture from separate images taken in blue, green, red, and near-infrared light. More than halfway across the universe, an enormous blue star nicknamed Icarus is the farthest individual star ever seen. The random orientations of the arcs also suggested they were produced by localized eruptions from active regions on the star's surface. This image provided the first evidence that the brightest arcs and knots were created during several outbursts. The image on the left, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, reveal its complex circumstellar ejecta, with arcs, filaments, and knots of material formed by the massive outflows. Short lifespans - only tens of thousands of years as a luminous blue variable - make these stars fairly rare scientists have only identified a few dozen in our Milky Way and nearby galaxies.Įmail Meghan Bartels at or follow her on Twitter Follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.These NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images show the outflow from one of the brightest hypergiant stars in the sky, VY Canis Majoris. AG Carinae, which scientists think is about 70 times more massive than the sun, may last perhaps 5 million or 6 million years. In the case of AG Carinae, that means outward pressure briefly overpowering gravity to spew material out into space, an outburst that stabilizes the star into balance again, more or less.īut even still, massive stars can only endure a certain number of such outbursts before running out of fuel. It has an apparent magnitude of 9. Discovered in 1781 by Charles Messier, this galaxy is located 54 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Within a star, the inward pressure of gravity and the outward pressure of radiation from the star typically balance, but in an unstable star, one occasionally wins out over the other. The monstrous M87 is the dominant member of the neighboring Virgo cluster of galaxies, which contains some 2,000 galaxies. The outbursts, surprisingly, are a tactic to keep the star together, according to the ESA statement. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey 2. The sky around the star AG Carinae, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. ![]()
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