Contains:  Extremely wide field

Image of the day 05/18/2018

    The Gum Nebula, John Gleason

    The Gum Nebula

    Image of the day 05/18/2018

      The Gum Nebula, John Gleason

      The Gum Nebula

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      Description

      The Gum Nebula (also known as Gum 12 ) is an immense and tenuous diffuse nebula , the largest of the entire celestial vault; invisible with optical instruments, it extends into the heart of the ancient constellation of the Argo Ship , and particularly in the Sails , with its center located at about 450 parsecs from the solar system . It would have resulted from the explosion of one or more supernovae some millions of years ago. [2]

      The Gum Nebula is one of the largest nebulae known within the Milky Way and is an important study scenario on the expansion of bubbles generated by supernova explosions within the galactic arm environment, as well as the interaction between these and the surrounding molecular clouds; on the edges of the cloud, in fact, some limited star formation phenomena are active , located in small clouds (known as cometary globules because of their appearance).

      This is a crop from a 111 tile hydrogen alpha mosaic imaged remotely from Coonabarabran, NSW.

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      The Gum Nebula, John Gleason