Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  Crescent Nebula  ·  NGC 6888
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Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young, Andre van Zegveld
Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young
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Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young

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Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young, Andre van Zegveld
Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young
Powered byPixInsight

Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young

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Massive stars lead short, spectacular lives. This image reveals dramatic details of the Crescent Nebula, a giant gaseous shell created by powerful winds blowing from the massive star HD 192163 (a.k.a. WR 136).After only 4.5 million years (one-thousandth the age of the Sun), HD 192163 began its headlong rush toward a supernova catastrophe. First it expanded enormously to become a red giant and ejected its outer layers at about 20,000 miles per hour. Two hundred thousand years later - a blink of the eye in the life of a normal star - the intense radiation from the exposed hot, inner layer of the star began pushing gas away at speeds in excess of 3 million miles per hour!When this high speed "stellar wind" rammed into the slower red giant wind, a dense shell was formed. In the image, a portion of the shell is shown in red. The force of the collision created two shock waves: one that moved outward from the dense shell to create the green filamentary structure, and one that moved inward to produce a bubble of million degree Celsius X-ray emitting gas (blue). The brightest X-ray emission is near the densest part of the compressed shell of gas, indicating that the hot gas is evaporating matter from the shell. 

HD 192163 will likely explode as a supernova in about a hundred thousand years.

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Crescent Nebula: Live Fast, Blow Hard and Die Young, Andre van Zegveld