About 5,000 light-years (2,900 trillion miles) from Earth, in the constellation Puppis, lies the Calabash Nebula, 1.4 light-years (more than 8 trillion miles) long. It is nicknamed the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains sulfur, which would give off an awful smell — if anyone could smell in space.
A dying star
This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows violent collisions of gas that have produced supersonic shock fronts in a dying star.
Stars like our Sun eventually die, throwing most of their material outward into shells of gas and dust. These shells go on to form some of the most beautiful objects in the universe, known as planetary nebulae.
Racing gas and shock waves
- The yellow in the image is material ejected from the central star, racing away at up to one and a half million kilometers per hour (one million miles per hour).
- Because the gas moves so fast, it forms shock fronts when it collides, heating the gas around it.
Computer calculations had long predicted that such shocks exist and what they look like, but earlier observations had not been able to confirm the theory.
Sources
- NASA Image and Video Library: "History of Hubble Space Telescope (HST)" (image 0300724), on the Calabash Nebula.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from images.nasa.gov
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