The Red Spider Nebula in Sagittarius

Now that James Webb has arrived, the latest generation of space telescope capable of taking amazing pictures, some might think that dear old man Hubble will retire. But no: the Dean of space telescopes will continue to operate, and even the old photos he took can be analyzed for elements that help us understand the space around us.

For example the tongue of fire specified in Red Spider Nebula.

diamond shape nebula

The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the Red Spider Nebula, which in fact resembles a stylized spider with its legs, and due to a number of factors such as composition, temperature, and age, it is a light red.

Our red spider is located about 3000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius. It is a bi-lobed nebula, that is, with two continuous streams of plasma emerging from the poles of the remainder of the star. The nebula is actually the last stage in the life of a low-mass star. In this case, it comes from one of the hottest stars ever recorded by a space telescope. High winds produce waves Its height reaches 100 billion km.

red spider fire tongue

this question winds That our spider-shaped nebula produces is absolutely amazing. The waves that are produced and propagated around the celestial body are caused by shocks at supersonic speed, typical for the last phase of a star’s life: the gas that forms and surrounds it is compressed and heated, in front of the lobes. Rapidly expanding outward. It happens with the smallest stars, those between 0.08 and 0.5 solar masses.

In this collision, some atoms are captured, which emit the amazing radiation that can be seen in the center of the image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, which looks like tongue of fire.

Hubble discoveries

HubbleJames Webb, the “father” of James Webb, is no stranger to exciting images or important discoveries about the formation and formation of the part of the universe that surrounds us.

In the sky since 1990, this space telescope has given rise to the analysis of mystery dark matter, allowing astronomers to reproduce its distribution on a large scale. Hubble also allowed observations of protoplanetary disks – the first stage in planet formation – and exoplanets, that is, those outside the solar system: none of them was known in 1990. Today 5000 . has been selected.

Thanks to Hubble, scientists have also been able to study gamma-ray bursts and small cosmic explosions Which reached a record in 2022. Thanks to Hubble, we now also know Pluto’s four moons: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx. And then, last but not least, there are files black holeswhich we would be almost blind without the help of a space telescope: Hubble has found an alternative way to confirm these celestial bodies that cannot be seen because they also capture light, that is, by measuring the velocity of gas and stars around a place where a black hole is suspected.