MessageToEagle.com - This new image from ESO shows a section of a cloud of dust and glowing gas called the
Seagull Nebula. These wispy red clouds form part of the “wings” of the celestial bird and this picture reveals an
intriguing mix of dark and glowing red clouds, weaving between bright stars.
This new view was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Running along the border between the constellations of Canis Major (The Great Dog) and Monoceros (The Unicorn) in
the southern sky, the Seagull Nebula is a huge cloud mostly made of
hydrogen gas. It’s an example of what astronomers refer to as an HII region. Hot new stars form within these clouds
and their intense ultraviolet radiation causes the surrounding gas to glow brightly.
Click on image to enlarge
The glowing cloud Sharpless 2-296, part of the Seagull Nebula. Credits: ESO
The reddish hue in this image is a telltale sign of the presence of ionised hydrogen. The Seagull Nebula, known
more formally as IC 2177, is a complex object with a bird-like shape that is made up of three large clouds of gas —
Sharpless 2-292 forms the “head”, this new image shows part of Sharpless 2-296, which comprises the
large “wings”, and Sharpless 2-297 is a small, knotty addition to the tip of the gull’s right “wing”.
These objects are all entries in the Sharpless nebula catalogue, a list of over 300 glowing clouds of gas compiled
by American astronomer Stewart Sharpless in the 1950s.
Before he published this catalogue Sharpless was a graduate
student at the Yerkes Observatory near Chicago, USA, where he and his colleagues published observational work that
helped to show that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with vast, curved arms.
Spiral galaxies can contain thousands of HII regions, almost all of which are concentrated along their spiral arms.
The Seagull Nebula lies in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
But this is not the case for all galaxies; while irregular galaxies do contain HII regions, these are jumbled up
throughout the galaxy, and elliptical galaxies are different yet again — appearing to lack these regions altogether.
The presence of HII regions indicates that active star formation is still in progress in a galaxy.
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Zooming in on the wings of the Seagull Nebula
This image of Sharpless 2-296 was captured by the Wide Field Imager (WFI), a large camera mounted on the MPG/ESO
2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. It shows only a small section of the nebula, a large
cloud that is furiously forming hot stars in its interior.
The frame shows Sharpless 2-296 lit up by several
particularly bright young stars — there are many other stars scattered across the region, including one so bright
that stands out as the gull’s “eye” in pictures of the entire complex.
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MessageToEagle.com - This new image from ESO shows a section of a cloud of dust and glowing gas called the
Seagull Nebula. These wispy red clouds form part of the “wings” of the celestial bird and this picture reveals an
intriguing mix of dark and glowing red clouds, weaving between bright stars.
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and technology communities. Wong has developed a Bluetooth-enabled device that allows for remote cardiac examination.
Objects created using 3-D printing have a common flaw: They are fragile and often fall apart or lose their shape.
"I have an entire zoo of broken 3-D printed objects in my office," said Bedrich Benes, an associate professor of computer graphics at Purdue University.
Have you ever wanted to become a rocket scientist or space cargo pilot? How about mixing space science with a game?
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