Five heavenly flowers .. A fun trip in the folds of nebulae and stars

Items

• Learn about the seven most extreme planets
• Pulsars .. Stars died to live
• A unique lunar event that appears every 28 years
• Black holes eject large amounts of atoms
• A giant telescope delves into the details of Lake Nebula

Whatever you see in the sky, stars, nebulae, and stellar clusters falls entirely within the scope of our galaxy, you can't see any stars from any other galaxy in the sky, and only the other galaxies - those we observe in full with our telescopes - are what falls outside this range, in The truth before the late twenties of the last century did not know this information, everyone in the scientific community imagined that the entire universe is the galaxy of the Milky Way, and that galaxies are nebulae as well, until Edwin Hubble came and confirmed the spacing of galaxies from each other by cosmic expansion.

Death of the stars

We will start from the constellation Twin Gemini area, and during the late autumn, winter, and half-spring the observer can ponder over the night sky, and you can review a previous report (2) that simply explains how to locate it in the night sky. By identifying the star Sigma from the constellation, as with the attached map, you can easily reach the Eskimo Nebula, also called the Clown Nebula, a Planetary Nebula. What does that mean?

A planetary nebula is a nebula produced at the end of the life of medium-mass stars such as the Sun.It happens that the star begins his life by feeding on the hydrogen of the initial stellar cloud from which it is formed, and then grows to become a young star of the main sequence stars (Main Sequence Stars), which is the group of stars that still burn Then, when hydrogen is depleted, the star's center begins to incorporate higher elements, helium, causing its nuclei to swell and expel its outer envelopes.

The outer shells are bursting in the form of stellar winds, which remain so until they remain at the center of a small, dense white dwarf surrounded by a massive star cloud. Now, let's look at the famous Hubble telescope of the Eskimo nebula. Exactly, the remaining white dwarf after the end of the life of the star, surrounded by a huge cloud of components of the star's casings, notice the shape of that cloud and the form of the thrust of its parts steadily from the center, that clouds are bursting at a speed of 115 thousand kilometers per hour, can you believe it?

So the planetary nebula has nothing to do with the planets, which is actually a deceptive name, but what astronomers called it a few centuries ago because they imagined that these were stellar clouds and what lies within them is a planet under manufacture, while in fact it is our hot white dwarf, William Herschel discovered the Eskimo nebula. About two hundred and sixty years ago, it is estimated that the brilliant cloud that you see in the picture is ten thousand years old, that is, it began almost with the beginning of the formation of our civilization, appears in the sky as much as about 10, and the apparent fate is the brightness of the star for us on Earth, and starts from Negative to the positive, so the brightest stars of the sky - poetry right Intent - shines as much as -1.46, and the higher the number, the less bright the star, and the boundaries of the naked eye is a value of 4, for example, it means that a faint nebula whose content can only be clearly contemplated by a medium or large telescope, for example, 8-12 inches, will be important Really enjoyable.

Planetary nebulae do not last much, as they are the envelopes of a star rising and bursting out at enormous speeds.This means that at some point they will fully propagate in interstellar space, leaving the white dwarf in the middle. End, and so it will stop emitting rays, which in turn light up the cloud of the nebula and see it from Earth, so planetary nebulae are relatively short-lived, about ten thousand years, for example, in the end the white dwarf turns into a black dwarf very slowly, billions of years, we are now in front of a dead star Nebulae are said to be roses placed on the graves of stars After her death.

Nevertheless, planetary nebulae resemble a phoenix / phoenix, one of the famous and remarkable legends we see in the Sindbad and Thousand and One Nights stories. As Phoenix dies out of its ashes a new phoenix, planetary nebulae are especially important for the same reason. Interstellar space, where during the launch of these clouds in interstellar space may be used elements out of them, such as carbon, calcium, oxygen, in the construction of new stars, or perhaps viable planets around other stars, from death come out of life!

When we look at the Eskimo nebula and other planetary nebulae, then we look at the future of the sun, at some point after about five billion years, and after the sun has expanded to become larger than its current size, at that point the sun has reached its Earth, though, will not eat the sun but will push it forward, but life on Earth will be over millions of years.

Heavenly Rock Kings

Next to the constellation of the twin you can contemplate the open star cluster (M44), the open star clusters are clusters of stars born in the same cloud, and we have referred to him and the Beehive pool before that in two separate reports ( 3,4 ), so we need not learn Just now, we just need to go down a little below the twin constellation to the left at the Taurus constellation, exactly at the star “Opsilon”. To the right of this star lies another type of nebulae we know as the supernova remnant balm, the nebula that formed some The largest and most powerful explosions of the universe.

Crab Nebula is a remnant of a supernova that originated from a star 10 times larger than the Sun that erupted in 1054 and was seen in China, Japan and Korea and recorded in their books by the guest star, who lit the night sky. As a full moon for nearly a month, and what we see from this explosion are those clouds bursting at it at a speed of 3,000 kilometers per second, this nebula has a width of about ten light years, which means that the width of ten complete solar systems.

These remains are still rushing to the space surrounding the former star, leaving in the center what we call a neutron star, we can not see it is a diameter of ten kilometers or slightly larger, but nevertheless carries almost a full mass of the sun, and orbits itself at an amazing speed - 30 times per second - Releasing radioactive pulses that the observer on Earth can capture and recognize, especially when human telescopes evolved and were able to detect bands in the electromagnetic spectrum other than the visible light.

A supernova occurs when some stellar masses, for example eight solar masses, reach the end of their lifetime, where the force of gravity prevails over the nuclear fusion forces that chose after they were unable to integrate iron to make higher elements in the periodic table. Causing this massive explosion, the supernova is so large that we can see it happen in galaxies millions of light-years away, as happened a few days ago in the fireworks galaxy, which is about 22 light years away.

The colors in the Hubble picture that you see in front of you indicate that there are elements of sulfur and oxygen in the threads released from the explosion, and that the cloud contains how much carbon and silica enough to make 40 thousand planets like Earth, in a previous report on supernovae (7) we talked about gold and a host of other elements Similarly, the supernova can create new beginnings from the end of the age of other stars. These elements start at enormous speeds to collide with them and help form stars and planets. Collide strongly with scavenging The neighboring star, which could trigger the formation of a new star by heating the waves of the explosion of that cloud, in fact the sun and the terrestrial elements we know from the remains of a star other than the sun had exploded perhaps five billion years ago.

The Crab Nebula shines as much as 8.4, which means that it needs a medium telescope to see its structure clearly, but a small telescope can pick it up as a small cloud of dust without any detail. The Crab Nebula is also called the M1. Charles Messier for his list in 1771, and has since remained of special importance to all amateur astronomers and specialists.

To date, we have identified two basic types of these magnificent celestial roses, planetary nebulae, and remnants of supernovae.We will now need to take our telescopes northward towards the constellation Flamed / Cepheus, the husband of the beautiful Queen of Ethiopia and the father of Andromeda, the serial woman, between the two stars Right and the difference, slightly above, where a small / medium telescope can notice that bright, light cloud, it is the iris nebula (Iris Nebula, NGC 7023), which is one of the brightest reflective nebulae, let's first recognize the reflection nebula.

Star Nurseries

The nebulae are generally divided into three types, we already know two of them, the third is the diffuse nebula (Diffuse Nebula), which by definition seems to talk about the general shape of the nebula, but here we mean that nebula associated with the birth of stars and their development, where this nebulous abundant Hydrogen, the food of the stars, and the diffuse nebula begins as a dark nebula, it is only a cloud of gas and dark, non-radioactive dust, so it appears in the telescopes as an empty area, while originally it is thick smoke that prevents the light of the stars behind it from reaching the observer on Earth, contains This dust is on almost everything, basically hydrogen, with a waste The stars that exploded as supernovae or shaken off their outer envelopes as planetary nebulae, so those dark clouds are the perfect custodian of the birth of new stars and perhaps the birth of life.

Then, when parts of that cloud are clustered by shock waves, for example, coming from a nearby supernova, they begin to accumulate until their temperature rises until they reach a stage with which they begin nuclear fusion, and the new star begins his life by radiating light and heat. Emission Nebula, where the hydrogen atoms glow in the part of the cloud surrounding the newborn star, making them shine light toward us, while the rest of the dark cloud is also reflecting the glow of that star makes a reflective nebula (Reflection Nebula) Case.

Our iris nebula is a reflective nebula, reflecting the light of a huge star in its center, called (HD 200775) .This star has an apparent magnitude of 6, which means that the observer with a small or medium telescope will easily see the star, while clouds appear around it as a bright smoke. Long-hauling clouds appear in an exquisite blue color, this time our nebula shines just as much as 6.8, meaning that observing it will be an easy task for a small telescope, and an easier and more fascinating task for an average telescope.

To re-adjust our telescopes, our fourth hole on that celestial journey, perhaps spanning trillions of kilometers, is located near the constellation of the rhinoceros (Monoceros), and we can monitor it from late summer, through winter and early to mid-spring, the nebula of the Rosette (Nebula), located nebula The rose next to the constellation Epsilon from the constellation, which makes it easier for you to search for them a lot, as the star will appear in the telescope as a point does not shine next to which no other stars with the same luster.

This nebula is about 65 light-years away, yes, as I heard it, it is already 65 solar collections, and carries within it a mass of ten thousand sun, and the nebula is a type of emission, where the star group causes a very hot center nebula, open star cluster Which contains hundreds of young stars, only five million years, in the ionization of the cloud and the radiation of this light that we see in the images of the nebula, which appears as a huge celestial flower is inconceivable we can imagine, these stars in the center caused by the strong stellar winds in the formation of other stars All the time, as these emissions cause parts of the As we have just said, a nuclear fusion begins, and so on.

The Rose Nebula cannot be easily hunted through a telescope, although its apparent value is 9 and allows a large or medium telescope to observe it, but its clouds are very dim and extended and appear as a light cloud, but you can take it with a camera with a telescope, with a long exposure on a dark night in a remote area, all You need to point the telescope to the star Opsilon and let the camera pick up light rays from the nebula for a short time. The longer the exposure, the more bright the nebula's red color will appear, while the open astronomical assembly - number 50 in the Caldwell index - can be easily detected by small telescopes. View the entire nebula containing the cluster Astral 130 light years.

Now we stand on the threshold of the end of our enjoyable journey, and our fifth response here is not really a single dark nebula, but rather a complete journey going on in the galactic belt, a journey we have already gone through in an earlier article (8) “Towards Cathy: Sailing the Milky Way”, starting from The Great Rift, a collection of dark molecular dust clouds that separates us from the Sagittarius Arm from the galaxy, an area believed to contain nearly one million solar masses of star dust and plasma, passing through the Cygnus star cloud. Which extends along the line of the constellation hen heading from the upper wing to the head at The hen's beak (Alberio), above the dark part of the Great Rift in that area. The rift then extends to the last part of it, the chicken rift, until we pass through Ethiopia and then do not stop until we hit the hunter's head.

Well, that was a long and exhausting journey, stretching the length and width of the galaxy almost, and carried from the biography of death as it carried the stories of life, as you can see, the most beautiful thing in the study of nebulae is the dialectic of death and birth in them, the stars die by explosions are staggering or shake off their outer covers, to make The nearby stellar clouds have the material of life for new, nascent stars.

In fact, this always leads us to meditate, to try to understand the magnitude of this horrible wickedness in our small minds, and to try to inspire every possible atom of hope and despair.We are as small and insignificant as our human being in this universe, able to digest it, understand it, probe through science, the tool we have created. With our small minds, we are like yin and yang.

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* This report is based on the experience of the writer Kvalki amateur in the study of the night sky, and the author obtained the main information from the collection of books (Deep-Sky Companions) by Stephen James Omerah of the Cambridge University Press, which includes four parts (Hidden Treasures - The Caldwell Objects) The Messier Objects - The Secret Deep) also resorted to the book (Nebulae and How To Observe Them) by the writer Stephen Core of the publishing house Springer, and the author advises each novice in the hobby of astronomy to resort to those simplified and comprehensive references.