1/3 🔠🧪 #histsci #extragalactic 🧵
This fabulous image, nicknamed “Cosmic Reef” because it resembles an undersea world, commemorated Hubble's 30th anniversary in orbit (in 2020).
Source ➡️ https://esahubble.org/news/heic2007/
The giant red nebula NGC 2014 and the smaller blue one NGC 2020 are part of ⤵️
This fabulous image, nicknamed “Cosmic Reef” because it resembles an undersea world, commemorated Hubble's 30th anniversary in orbit (in 2020).
Source ➡️ https://esahubble.org/news/heic2007/
The giant red nebula NGC 2014 and the smaller blue one NGC 2020 are part of ⤵️
Comments
As I wrote (and as you can read at the link in the post) "The giant red nebula NGC 2014 and the smaller blue one NGC 2020 are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, some 163,000 ly away".
So the “Cosmic Reef” is #extragalactic.
a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, some 163,000 ly away.
The cooler, red gas in NGC 2014 is due to the presence of hydrogen and nitrogen, the blue areas unveil the shine of hot oxygen. ⤵️
The blue nebula NGC 2020 was formed by a gigantic star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun: the Wolf-Rayet star BAT99-59.
The star ejected the blue gas through a series of eruptive events with loss of part of its outer envelope of material.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI