The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced an outstanding image of part of the Snowman Nebula.
This Hubble image shows part of the Snowman Nebula. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Tan, Chalmers University of Technology / Gladys Kober, NASA & Catholic University of America.
The Snowman Nebula is located some 6,000 light-years away in the large southern constellation of Puppis.
Also designated as LBN 1046, this object is classified as an emission nebula because it contains ionized hydrogen.
“Emission nebulae are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light,” the Hubble astronomers explained.
“The radiation from these massive stars strips electrons from the nebula’s hydrogen atoms in a process called ionization.”
“As the energized electrons revert from their higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, they emit energy in the form of light, causing the nebula’s gas to glow.”
Hubble captured just a small segment of the Snowman Nebula. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Tan, Chalmers University of Technology / DSS / Gladys Kober, NASA & Catholic University of America.
From a telescope on Earth, this nebula looks a bit like a dual-lobed ball of gas, but the new Hubble image captures the details of sweeping curves of bright gas and dark knots of dust in a small section of the nebula.
“The Snowman is also known as Sharpless 2-302 (Sh2-302), one of the objects in a catalog of mostly emission nebulae that was compiled by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as he sought to identify areas of interstellar ionized hydrogen, or HII regions,” the researchers said.
“This image was captured as part of a survey of massive- and intermediate-size protostars.”
“We used the infrared sensitivity of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to look for hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet light from the protostars, jets from the stars, and other features.”
