Hubble offers a dazzling 'necklace'
August 11, 2011 by Donna Weaver / Ray Villard
The Necklace Nebula is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta (the Arrow). In this composite image, taken on July 2, 2011, Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 captured the glow of hydrogen (blue), oxygen (green), and nitrogen (red). Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
(PhysOrg.com) -- A giant cosmic necklace glows brightly in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.
The object, aptly named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, the glowing remains of an ordinary, Sun-like star. The nebula consists of a bright ring, measuring 12 trillion miles wide, dotted with dense, bright knots of gas that resemble diamonds in a necklace.
A pair of stars orbiting close together produced the nebula, also called PN G054.2-03.4. About 10,000 years ago one of the aging stars ballooned to the point where it engulfed its companion star. The smaller star continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the giant’s rotation rate.
The bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the gas escaped along the star’s equator, producing a ring. The embedded bright knots are dense gas clumps in the ring.
The pair is so close, only a few million miles apart, they appear as one bright dot in the center. The stars are furiously whirling around each other, completing an orbit in a little more than a day.
The Necklace Nebula is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta. In this composite image, taken on July 2, Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured the glow of hydrogen (blue), oxygen (green), and nitrogen (red).
Provided by
JPL/NASA
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Aug 11, 2011
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Aug 11, 2011
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Aug 11, 2011
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Examples of "ansae' such as these are not uncommon in some subtypes of planetary nebula
Aug 11, 2011
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http://imgsrc.hub...rint.jpg
Provides a lovely view of the glowing nitrogen expelled from the star along it's rotational axis
Aug 12, 2011
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A wider-angle view from the Isaac Newton Telescope can be found here: http://upload.wik.../IP6.jpg
Aug 12, 2011
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Aug 13, 2011
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Fragmentation - driven by neutron repulsion [1] - powers the cosmos, sustains our lives, and causes expansion of the universe as neutrons expand their volume by a factor of 10^15 (1,0000,000,000,000,000) in decaying into hydrogen atoms [2].
1. "Neutron Repulsion", The APEIRON Journal, in press, 19 pages (2011):
http://arxiv.org/...2.1499v1
2. "Is the Universe Expanding?" The Journal of Cosmology 13, 4187-4190 (2011):
http://journalofc...102.html
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Aug 13, 2011
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Simply confirms that the Great Reality that surrounds and sustains -
Universe, God, Cosmos, Higher Power
Is powered by neutron repulsion [1] (illustrated by resentments, anger and violence in the Hindu Goddess Kali [2]) in compressed material at the cores of atoms, stars and galaxies while the universe expands [3].
Oliver K. Manuel
References:
1. See above: http://arxiv.org/...2.1499v1
2. Kali: www.exoticindiaar...kali.htm
3. See above: http://journalofc...102.html
Aug 14, 2011
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Superficially the two rings do look similar. Even the secondary extraplanar rings share some similarities. Compare SN 1987A: http://sci.esa.in...6188.jpg
with a deep, wide-field view of the Necklace Nebula: http://upload.wik.../IP6.jpg
Morphology aside, the bright EQ ring in SN1987A is the result of material expelled by the SN that is just now crashing into this much older ring.
In the case of the Necklace, strong UV from the freshly-exposed core irradiates the gasses in the ring.
According to the paper I've linked above, the mass of the hot post-AGB primary star ~0.5-1.0 solar masses while the secondary is estimated to be no more than 1 solar mass. Thus neither star was massive enough to go SN to begin with (and any earlier mass transfer was apparently insufficient to bring this about either). So no pulsar progenitor too!