The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile has captured an amazing new photo of a nebula known as NGC 3199.
NGC 3199 appears to plough through the star-studded sky like a ship through stormy seas. Image credit: ESO.
NGC 3199, also known as Gum 28 and RCW 48, lies 12,000 light-years away from Earth and is about 75 light-years across.
The nebula was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel on April 1, 1834 as he compiled his famous catalogue of interesting night sky objects.
This imagery is very appropriate due to NGC 3199’s location in Carina — a southern constellation which is named after the keel of a ship.
The object’s bright crescent feature is now known to be part of a much larger but fainter bubble of gas and dust.
NGC 3199 contains a notable star named WR18 (otherwise known as HD 89358), which is an unusual type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet star.
Wolf-Rayet stars are massive, powerful, and energetic stars that are just about reaching the end of their lives.
They flood their surroundings with thick, intense, fast-moving winds that push and sweep at the material found there, carving out weird and wonderful shapes as they do so.
These winds can create strong shockwaves when they collide with the comparatively cool interstellar medium, causing them to heat up anything in their vicinity.
This process can heat material to such high temperatures that it is capable of emitting X-rays, a type of radiation emitted only by highly energetic phenomena in the Universe.
This is what has happened in the case of the nebula NGC 3199.
WR18 is thought to be a star with especially powerful winds; once it has run out of material to fuel these substantial winds it will explode violently as a supernova, creating a final breath-taking blast as it ends its stellar life.
