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Questions tagged [nebula]

A collection of ionized gases and dust in interstellar space

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Whose name is Minkowski 92 bearing?

Minkowski 92 is a protoplanetary nebula. But after which Minkowski is it named? Same question for Minkowski's object (part of NGC 541).
Ark25's user avatar
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Information on Planetary nebula formed from the death of our star the 'Sun'!

I want to know the expansion rate, composition, mass and density of hydrogen present of a Planetary nebula similar to that which will be formed after the death of our star the sun. Knowing these ...
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Nebula and its Colours [duplicate]

A Nebula boasts of Too Bright Awesome Colors that includes red, blue, green, orange, white, etc? They're result of excitation of electrons. Is there a clear explanation as in which Color is ...
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Nebula and its colors

A Nebula has bright awesome colors that include red, blue, green, orange, white, etc? They're result of excitation of electrons. Is there a clear explanation as to which color is attributed to an ...
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Will the nebula of Betelgeuse be visible to the naked eye? How bright, how large, how soon, for how long?

When Betelgeuse goes core collapse supernova it will leave a supernova remnant. Will it become visible to the naked eye? If so, in what time frame will it be visible. Will it be star like from the ...
LocalFluff's user avatar
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DSO in a 60mm telescope

I am thinking about buying a telescope, but here in Brazil they are very expensive and hard to find where to buy. So, the better telescope I can pay for is a Celestron Powerseeker 60AZ. My main ...
Vitor Z.'s user avatar
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How can an accretion disk form around the central star of a planetary nebula?

I was reading the 2012 paper A tidally destructed massive planet as the progenitor of the two light planets around the sdB star KIC 05807616 about the possible origin of two exoplanets that orbit a ...
URIZEN's user avatar
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What are realistic and unrealistic values for the high energy gamma ray spectral indices of pulsar wind nebulae?

This summer, I was working on a project fitting very high energy gamma ray spectra of the Crab Nebula, a pulsar wind nebula. At energies about $\sim$1 TeV, a simple power law suffices, i.e. $\phi(E)\...
HDE 226868's user avatar
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Assuming no light pollution, was "2C. 1406" ever visible to the naked eye?

Joseph Needham, in his Science and Civilisation in China Vol. III, claimed that there was an ancient record of a nova about three thousand years ago. As a result of private correspondences with a "Dr ...
dROOOze's user avatar
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Does Nickel show up in spectra of Nova?

Does a nova, not a supernova, get hot enough that nickel is produced despite its formation by fusion being an endothermic reaction? If nickel is made, does it make it out of the star into the nebula? ...
Wayfaring Stranger's user avatar
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How to locate nebulas visible through AstroMaster 114 telescope without device assistance?

I will be going to the desert this month and it's my understanding that the night sky will be very dark there. I've got some practice locating the planets but I'd really like to get a look at a nebula ...
S. Imp's user avatar
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Can we see the color of nebulae?

Someone asked me this question: To see the color of the Great Nebula in Orion, how large the aperture of the telescope should be. I don’t even know whether this is possible. I understand that the ...
fantasie's user avatar
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2 answers
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Are the viewable nebulae only in our galaxy?

Where are all the nebulae located? Yes, a simple question that should be obvious but apparently is not to me. To be more explicit, how far are all these objects? Are they mostly in our galaxy? I'm ...
Mitch Harris's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
249 views

How dark would the sun become if we traversed a Bok globule?

Bart Bok gave his name to dust clouds of 2-50 solar masses, which by their darkness may be 100 times more frequent than telescopes can detect. If the solar system traversed a Bok Globule, how dark ...
bandybabboon's user avatar
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Eagle Nebula (Pillar of Creation) destroyed?

How do they know that the pillars have been destroyed if the light will reach us in 1000 years time? The "Pillars of Creation" from the Eagle Nebula. Evidence from the Spitzer Telescope suggests ...
ACV's user avatar
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What factors makes a star big in size(Physically)?Is the size of the nebula a relevant factor?

(Our sun compared to some of the known stars) I know that the star is born in a nebula.Do only a extremely gigantic nebula give rise to large-radius star or is there any other factors related?
Paran's user avatar
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Is this an actual nebula or CGI?

I'm thinking of putting a large wall paper with an astronomical motive on a wall. I found quite a number of wall papers by various vendors, but most of them are obviously computer generated images, ...
Jens's user avatar
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Determining line ratios in planetary nebula

I know that the line strength ratio tells us how hot the electron plasma in a nebula is, and also give information about the electron densities in the nebula. But how do you compute the line ratios? ...
user9404237's user avatar
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Doubt about star formation [duplicate]

When a star runs out of hydrogen, it either goes through supernova or forms white dwarf and planetary nebula. So there should not be much hydrogen left to form a new star in the nebula. So how new ...
soumya's user avatar
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Is this a real photo or an art work?

I've never seen this Hubble picture, is it an artist impression? It's fascinating because there are voids apparently cause by supernovae. From the video 1 Hour of Epic Space Music: COSMOS - Volume 1 ...
bandybabboon's user avatar
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How to visually tell the difference between a planetary nebula and a supernova remnant?

If we see a nebula by looking through a powerful telescope, how can we tell whether we are looking at the remnant of a supernova or at a planetary nebula? Thanks
Aspiring Mathematician's user avatar
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1 answer
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Do novas create a nebula? Could a planet survive if its star exploded in a nova?

Does a nova, caused by runaway fusion in hydrogen accreted onto a white dwarf from a companion star, create a visible nebula? If a planet were in a circumbinary orbit around a binary pair that ...
YottaEngineer's user avatar
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1 answer
750 views

How big is nebula dust?

Whenever I see the term dust for the particles of a nebula, I ask myself whether this is actually based on some reliable measure of particle size. Of course we can all agree it looks like dust from ...
Robert Frost's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
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Is this gas cloud or lens effect?

I was going through the zoomable image of Milky way and after zooming to this particular location, we can see a reddish area on the left side of a probably large star. Here is a screenshot I took ...
astre's user avatar
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1 answer
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Why isn't our local interstellar space colorised?

Looking at answers to this question, people seem pretty convinced that human naked eye should be able to see the colour of ionised gas/dust cloud when they are inside an emission nebula. And we know ...
bitinn's user avatar
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1 answer
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What state of matter are nebulae in?

After doing research it said that nebulas are made of gas and dust. Are they actually gases and solids, or are they plasma?
StellarExile's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
4k views

Why are O III lines so prominent in the spectra of emission nebulae when the amount of oxygen relative to hydrogen is a million times smaller?

Looking at spectra of emission nebulae like the Lagoon Nebula, the $[\text{O III}]$ lines are prominent in intensity. However, the abundance of oxygen is minuscule compared to hydrogen. How then are ...
Arvind H's user avatar
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1 answer
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Is the galaxy made of a nebula or the solar system?

My book says on the topic 'Formation of stars' that a galaxy starts forming by the accumulation of hydrogen gas in the form of very large clouds called nebulae. Then local lumps of gas are formed. ...
Kartik Watwani's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
653 views

Is Barnard 68 the only cloud so close to us that there are no stars between us and it?

Regarding molecular clouds / absorption nebulae / Bok globules / obscuring clouds, (I'm not sure if there's one generic term encompassing all those and any similar obscuring clouds - I just used "...
Fattie's user avatar
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What are the large round dark "holes" in this NASA Hubble image of the Crab Nebula?

I came across this image of the Crab Nebula taken from NASA Hubble telescope. What are the large round "holes" and how are they formed?
Martin's user avatar
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1 answer
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What are the dark spots in this Hubble image of the Crab Nebula?

I recently ran into this NASA Hubble image of the Crab Nebula in this article talking about its core. What I am interested to know though is: what are these round dark spots appearing in the image (...
Martin's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
942 views

Did we discover how nebulae hold their shapes?

As you know, nebulae such as the Eagle Nebula, the Cat's Eye Nebula, and the Pillars of Creation, have extraordinary shapes. But have we discovered why that is so? I've tried researching it myself ...
spjy's user avatar
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1 answer
510 views

Star formation: When a nebula collapses, is it only the gasses that form the star?

A nebula is made of dust (elements heavier than He and H) and gas (H and He). Stars are made when nebulae's collapse and hydrogen begins to fuse. 99% of nebula material goes into making the star. The ...
G. Gip's user avatar
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1 answer
209 views

How long do hot X-ray sources last?

Some X-ray sources in nebulae are caused by hot materials in the millions of degrees that formed in supernovae. What's the cooling rate of this stuff? How long does it stay this hot? If we would take ...
Gimelist's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
304 views

How do I see more than just points in the sky?

I just bought a new telescope with these specifications: Aperture: 203 mm Focal Length: 1200 mm F/ratio: f/5.9 I usually use a 28 mm eyepiece, giving me about 42.5x magnification, but I also have a ...
Harrison Rankin's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
108 views

What's the proper terminology for nebula clouds?

I'm writing a research paper over outer space (yeah, yeah, broad topic) and I'm wondering what the proper terminology for nebula clouds is. This is an excerpt from my paper showing how I'm going to ...
Sentry812's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
360 views

How useful are filters for spotting nebulae?

Recently I've been trying to spot a couple of nebulae, IC59 and IC1318. The skies at the site are modestly dark (4.5 on the Bortle scale), I'm using an 8" scope, and I've slowly scanned around the ...
Ceribia's user avatar
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2 votes
5 answers
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Fusion of elements inside heavy stars

I am confused with nucleosynthesis inside supernovae. I have read that the heavier elements are made through fusion of lighter element's namely hydrogen and helium. Does the star "store" all the ...
Lucian09474's user avatar
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1 answer
496 views

Why does hydrogen ionization happen in HII regions?

Why does hydrogen ionization happen in HII regions? Why is the hydrogen there ionized?
Featherball's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
44 views

What are the implications if the Sun was formed in a warm nebula?

Molecular oxygen O2 has been found on comet 67P/C-G in a ratio of 3.8% to water, which is much higher than expected. An explanation proposed is that the Solar System formed from a molecular cloud ...
LocalFluff's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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What is meant by "short lived" in the duration of a planetary nebula?

In this wikipedia article, it describes planetary nebula as "short-lived," but I'm not sure in relation to what? This could mean billions of years in some contexts. How long is short-lived? Bonus ...
Mikey's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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How do proto-planetary nebulae gain momentum?

currently I am curious about proto-planetary nebulae. At first I was curious about how planets spin but I read in a couple of articles that they got their spin from when they were in a proto-planetary ...
Dashboarrd's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
580 views

How to tell a nebula from a galaxy?

Not all galaxies are spiral in shape[1][2], some nebulae are huge[3] and nebula are the nursery of stars[4]. How to tell them apart? Note I have already compare the contents for galaxy and a nebula, ...
user6760's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
90 views

How can I find out which known stars lie within or close to M8

I'm looking for a way to find stars within a certain region of space, the Lagoona Nebula in this case, based on what we currently know. Are there some databases that allow you to make such queries? ...
John's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
417 views

Why is the Boomerang Nebula colder than the CMB?

An earlier answer on temperature mentioned that the temp of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is $2.4\,{\rm K}$ and the temp of the Boomerang nebula as ${\rm 1\,K}$. How did the nebula cool faster ...
Dustjacket's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
721 views

Relationship between temperature of nebula and size of star

I was wondering, in the process of star formation, does the temperature of the nebula that produces a star play a role in the size of that star? I mean, it's only logical that the size would depend on ...
L.R.'s user avatar
  • 704
2 votes
3 answers
12k views

How can I see a nebula?

I've recently been seeing a bunch of pictures of nebulae and I'm just fascinated by their beauty and complexity. Is there any kind of telescope that would make it possible to view it from here on ...
Y.G.'s user avatar
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25 votes
3 answers
3k views

Why is the Eagle Nebula so "static"?

This, of course, is a newbie question, as I am nothing more than a hobbyist. But I was quite surprised to see the recently-released "before and after" pictures of the so-called "Pillars of Creation" ...
kmote's user avatar
  • 353
3 votes
4 answers
3k views

Do heavier elements breakdown during supernova?

Heavier elements like gold, uranium etc. are formed at the end of a star's life. As the star explodes into a supernova, it gives rise to nebula which is the birthplace of new stars. But as the star ...
Yashbhatt's user avatar
  • 738
20 votes
2 answers
1k views

Will new stars stop forming at some point of time?

New stars keep forming in the universe thanks to all the nebulae. Now, we need Hydrogen to form stars and there would a time when all the hydrogen will get exhausted, and no more star formation will ...
Ranveer's user avatar
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