Slightly over four hundred years ago Galileo Galilel had just begun to improve telescopes with hopes of exploring space (Leonard 135). In the present day, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, more commonly known as NASA, are capable of taking high definition pictures of the endless mysterious in our galaxy and beyond. With these highly advanced telescopes, NASA has been able to photograph many of space’s phenomena’s. One of these photographs was of the nebulae known as the Pillars of Creation. The Pillars of Creation are columns of interstellar gas and dust, which also have stars being formed within them. Due to NASA’s improvements of the telescope, it is now possible to view and examine this nebula. According to Douglas Leonard, …show more content…
Cheseaux originally discovered the star cluster within the nebula. Around twenty years later, Messier famously discovered the nebulosity surrounding the star cluster. The image of this nebula was originally captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, and was then re-captured about twenty years. The newest image captured by this telescope shows any transformations of these pillars and also provides a sharper image of the Eagle Nebula. The first picture, which was captured in 1995, quickly became very popular as it shows one of spaces many wonders. The image is so popular that “it has appeared on postage stamps, T-shirts and pillows, and even made the rounds in television shows and movies” (Redd). Then, in 2015, this nebula was revisited and was then captured through a new camera called Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009 and wasn’t available for the first image. This new camera captured the image with infrared technology. This newly instated technology made the pillars to be fairly transparent, which allows astronomers to study the pillars with a new perspective. The new image confirmed scientist’s beliefs that stars were being created within the pillars. Due to the infrared technology, scientists were able to discover many long jets that were created by several protostar systems. These jets are evidence of stars being “born” and were only …show more content…
Even though this has never been seen, the pillars are still known as a “stellar nursery” according to Jake Hebert, an astronomer and a writer for the Institute of Creation Research. Herbert claims that the stars within the nebula are so large in size that they should have used up all of their nuclear energy within ten million years, and thus should already be “dead” by now. However the fact that these stars are still burning and are still very bright is ample evidence that they were “born” or created recently. Although there is evidence that stars are being created within this nebula, there is also evidence that this nebula is being destroyed. Many astronomers believe that this nebula has actually already been destroyed and no longer exists. Since these pillars are located seven thousand light years from Earth, it takes light seven thousand years to travel to where we can observe it. This means that when we observe the pillars, we are really looking seven thousand years into the past. Although we can see them still intact with our telescopes, “the pillars don’t exist, and they were destroyed more than a thousand years ago” (Diaz). A supernova that exploded rough six thousand years ago is the main culprit to the destruction of these pillars. Astronomers can see the supernova advancing towards the pillars, but we will not be able to witness these pillars being destroyed for a thousand
Messier 8, nicknamed the Lagoon Nebula is an interstellar cloud located in Sagittarius, discovered by John Flamsteed in 1680. It is one of the few nebulae that can be seen by the naked eye. It was given its nickname by Agnes
In the article from the official NASA website, NASA gives a list of Hubble’s accomplishments, which gives the reader a comprehensive picture of Hubble’s importance. Hubble has not only given astronomers the most detailed images of outer-space in existence, but also taug...
Nebula that was destroyed after it’s sun went supernova. Troubled by his findings, the priest
Every day we look into the night sky, wondering and dreaming what lies beyond our galaxy. Within our galaxy alone, there are millions upon millions of stars. This may be why it interests us to learn about all that we cannot see. Humans have known the existence of stars since they have had eyes, and see them as white glowing specks in the sky. The mystery lies beyond the white glowing specks we see but, in the things we cannot see in the night sky such as black holes.
The Orion Nebula is a spectacular sight. Consequently, it has been a preferred target of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) over recent years. The HST has provided a great deal of insight into the complicated process of star formation. In June of 1994, C.
Solar nebula is a rotating flattened disk of gas and dust in which the outer part of the disk became planets while the center bulge part became the sun. Its inner part is hot, which is heated by a young sun and due to the impact of the gas falling on the disk during its collapse. However, the outer part is cold and far below the freezing point of water. In the solar nebula, the process of condensation occurs after enough cooling of solar nebula and results in the formation into a disk. Condensation is a process of cooling the gas and its molecules stick together to form liquid or solid particles. Therefore, condensation is the change from gas to liquid. In this process, the gas must cool below a critical temperature. Accretion is the process in which the tiny condensed particles from the nebula begin to stick together to form bigger pieces. Solar nebular theory explains the formation of the solar system. In the solar nebula, tiny grains stuck together and created bigger grains that grew into clumps, possibly held together by electrical forces similar to those that make lint stick to your clothes. Subsequent collisions, if not too violent, allowed these smaller particles to grow into objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. These larger objects are called planetesimals. As planetesimals moved within the disk and collide with one another, planets formed. Because astronomers have no direct way to observe how the Solar System formed, they rely heavily on computer simulations to study that remote time. Computer simulations try to solve Newton’s laws of motion for the complex mix of dust and gas that we believe made up the solar nebula. Merging of the planetesimals increased their mass and thus their gravitational attraction. That, in turn, helped them grow even more massive by drawing planetesimals into clumps or rings around the sun. The process of planets building undergoes consumption of most of the planetesimals. Some survived planetesimals form small moons, asteroids, and comets. The leftover Rocky planetesimals that remained between Jupiter and Mars were stirred by Jupiter’s gravitational force. Therefore, these Rocky planetesimals are unable to assemble into a planet. These planetesimals are known as asteroids. Formation of solar system is explained by solar nebular theory. A rotating flat disk with center bulge is the solar nebula. The outer part of the disk becomes planets and the center bulge becomes the sun.
By 1936, astronomers had realized that the hazy balls they sometimes saw in their telescopes, which looked like stars obscured by gas, were actually galaxies (Hibbison).
If the nebula is dense enough, certain regions of it will begin to gravitationally collapse after being disturbed. As it collapses the particles begin to move more rapidly, which on a molecular level is actually heat, and photons are emitted that drive off the remaining dust and gas. Once the cloud has collapsed enough to cause the core temperature to reach ten-million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion starts in its core and this ball of gas and dust is now a star. It begins its life as a main sequence star and little does it know its entire life has already been predetermined.
A star begins as nothing more than a very light distribution of interstellar gases and dust particles over a distance of a few dozen lightyears. Although there is extremely low pressure existing between stars, this distribution of gas exists instead of a true vacuum. If the density of gas becomes larger than .1 particles per cubic centimeter, the interstellar gas grows unstable. Any small deviation in density, and because it is impossible to have a perfectly even distribution in these clouds this is something that will naturally occur, and the area begins to contract. This happens because between about .1 and 1 particles per cubic centimeter, pressure gains an inverse relationship with density. This causes internal pressure to decrease with increasing density, which because of the higher external pressure, causes the density to continue to increase. This causes the gas in the interstellar medium to spontaneously collect into denser clouds. The denser clouds will contain molecular hydrogen (H2) and interstellar dust particles including carbon compounds, silicates, and small impure ice crystals. Also, within these clouds, there are 2 types of zones. There are H I zones, which contain neutral hydrogen and often have a temperature around 100 Kelvin (K), and there are H II zones, which contain ionized hydrogen and have a temperature around 10,000 K. The ionized hydrogen absorbs ultraviolet light from it’s environment and retransmits it as visible and infrared light. These clouds, visible to the human eye, have been named nebulae. The density in these nebulae is usually about 10 atoms per cubic centimeter. In brighter nebulae, there exists densities of up to several thousand atoms per cubic centimete...
The nebula is a cloud in outer space made of gas and dust and stars are being made in there. There are three types of nebulas the emission, reflection, and planetary. The emission nebula shines with its own light. The reflection nebula is a cloud made of gas and dust and it doesn’t create its own light, but shines from the reflection of nearby stars. The planetary nebula is a ring-shaped nebula formed by an expanding shell of gas around an aging
The constellation also hosts the Orion Nebula (located directly below the "belt" of Orion), one of the most photographed and appreciated nebulas in the sky.
Ancient Chinese astronomers poetically named these explosions ‘guest stars’ and a full catalog of them. This catalog was maintained over centuries and carefully noted their various appearances and offers accurate information about their positions which has enabled modern astronomers to find remnants of these explosions in the sky today (International Dunhuang Project). Throughout the years, the Chinese also developed three different cosmological models. The first model was the Gai Tian. This model was a hemispherical dome that conceived the heavens as a hemisphere lying over the Earth, which was dome-shaped.
The Hubble Telescope is the world’s first space-based optical telescope. The Hubble telescope received its name from American astronomer Dr. Edwin P. Hubble. Dr. Hubble confirmed an ever expanding universe which provided the basic foundation of the Big Bang theory. The first concept of the Hubble telescope came from Lyman Spitzer in 1946, who at that time was a professor and researcher at Yale University. In 1946, Professor Spitzer believed that Earth’s atmosphere blurs and distorts light, and a space orbited telescope would be able to overcome this problem.
Azophi identified a large cloud in the night sky which turned out to be the Andromeda Galaxy.
As Scientific accomplishments continue to reach new heights it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue the case that a God truly exists. Arthur C. Clarke illustrates this idea to an extreme level in The Star, a short story centered around a Jesuit Chief Astrophysicist and his crew's mission to explore and reconstruct the events that lead up to the cause of the Phoenix Nebula, a star turned supernova that had erupted six thousand years prior. What he discovers challenges his religious integrity to its core. The Jesuit is decorated with contributions in astronomy and geophysics, in his arguments with his crew he is quick to cite his three papers in the Astrophysical Journal and his five papers in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.