Gigantic Star Blows Big Cosmic Bubble into Outer Space in Newly Released NASA Image
A gigantic star, 7,100 light years away from Earth, is blowing a big blue bubble.
The Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, is being produced by a proto-typical Wolf-Rayet star, or BD +60º2522, and images of it were revealed Thursday by NASA.
The star is “45 times more massive than our sun” and the bubble-like phenomenon is created because the gas on the star gets so hot “it escapes away into space as a ‘stellar wind’ moving at over four million miles per hour.”
“This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble much like a snowplow piles up snow in front of it as it moves forward,” NASA said in a statement.
The image of the Bubble Nebula were captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and shared by NASA to commemorate the 26th anniversary of the infamous telescope’s launch into outer space April 24, 1990.
This is not the first time the Bubble Nebula has been captured by the telescope. In fact, it has been a popular image for the Hubble for quite a while.
Previous images of the bubble exhibit the stunning colors that the star creates, but this new photo reveals some of the intricacies of the lines of dust spanning the nebula.
From helping researchers determine the age of the universe to producing some of the most stunning and educational images ever taken in outer space, the Hubble telescope has totally transformed the way the world interacts with the galaxy that surrounds us.
Scientists believe the telescope will be able to function some time into the 2020s, even when its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, launches in 2018.
—