This vivid new portrait captures in stunning clarity what looks like a gigantic cosmic soap bubble. The Bubble Nebula also known as NGC 7635, lies 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, and is, in fact a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the brilliant star within it. This new Hubble Space Telescope image has been released to celebrate Hubble’s 26th year in orbit.
The complete view of the Bubble Nebula allows us to fully appreciate the almost perfectly symmetrical shell which gives the nebula its name. This shell is the result of a powerful flow of gas – known as a stellar wind – from the bright star visible just to the left of centre in this image. The star, SAO 20575, is between 10 and 20 times the mass of the Sun and the pressure created by its stellar wind forces the surrounding interstellar material outwards into this bubble-like form.
The giant molecular cloud that surrounds the star – glowing in the star’s intense ultraviolet radiation – tries to stop the expansion of the bubble. However, although the sphere already measures around 10 light-years in diameter, it is still growing, owing to the constant pressure of the stellar wind – currently at more than 100,000 kilometres per hour!
As always, and 26 years on, Hubble gives us much more than a pretty picture.
Sources: https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/hubble-birthday-bubble-tangled-brain-webs-and-ecuador-earthquake
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