Post by glactus on Nov 11, 2008 10:02:34 GMT
The Trifid nebula
The Trifid Nebula, Messier 20, is an H II region located in the constellation of Sagittarius. The nebula's name means "divided into three lobes". Distance from Earth is 5,200 light years and magnitude is 6.3
The Trifid is a perennial favorite of visual and imaging amateur astronomers using telescopes of all sizes. The combination of star cluster, emission nebula, reflection nebula, and dark nebula makes it a beautiful deep sky object and photographic target.
The photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a detail of the nebula. This close-up shows a dense cloud of dust and gas, a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 light-years away from the nebula's central star,
A stellar jet protrudes from the head of the cloud and is about .75 light-years long. The jet's source is a young stellar object deep within the cloud. Jets are the exhaust gasses of star formation. Radiation from the nebula's central star makes the jet glow.
In January, 2005 NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope discovered 30 embryonic stars and 120 newborn stars not viewable in visible light images.
Credits: This is a NASA/Hubble image
