The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released a stunning image snapped by the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope of Gum 26, an emission nebula located some 20,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Vela.
This image from the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the emission nebula Gum 26. Image credit: ESO.
Emission nebulae are glowing clouds of ionized hydrogen gas that, as the name suggests, emit light of various wavelengths.
The mass of these nebulae ranges from 100 to 10,000 solar masses and interstellar hydrogen can be spread over a volume of less than one light-year to several hundred light-years.
The atoms in these objects are energized by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star and emit radiation as they fall back into lower energy states.
Emission nebulae are usually red because the predominant emission line of hydrogen happens to be red.
“Gum 26 is something known as an emission nebula or HII region, where the intense ultraviolet radiation streaming from newly-formed stars ionizes the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to emit a faint pinkish glow,”
“By catching new stars ‘pink-handed’ in this manner, we can learn more about the conditions under which stars arise, and study how they influence their cosmic environment.”
This image of Gum 26 was created as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems program, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach.
The program makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations.
All data collected may also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to astronomers through ESO’s science archive.
