Skip to main content

Hubble Celebrates 29th Anniversary with a Colorful Look at the Southern Crab Nebula

View All Press Releases
April 18, 2019 10:00AM (EDT)Release ID: 2019-15
A nebula that consists of two multi-color horseshoe-shaped structures aligned so that they point in opposite directions, forming an hourglass shape. They are made of a patchwork mix of yellow, orange, red, and blue. Within the openings of the horseshoes on each side are streaks of yellow and orange that radiate outward from the center, giving them the appearance of crab legs. At the center of the hourglass shape is a star with a bright-white central core that is surrounded by a fuzzy blue halo and has four diffraction spikes radiating from its center. (This is actually two stars that are so close together they appear as one star.) A distinct figure-eight structure with multiple layers of orange, red, and blue sits behind the central star.

Summary

Rich colors of the gases in the nebula's filaments correspond to glowing hydrogen (green), sulfur (red), nitrogen (orange), and oxygen (blue).

This Hubble image shows the results of two stellar companions in a gravitational waltz, several thousand light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Centaurus. The stellar duo, consisting of a red giant and white dwarf, are too close together to see individually in this view. But the consequences of their whirling about each other are two vast shells of gas expanding into space like a runaway hot air balloon. Both stars are embedded in a flat disk of hot material that constricts the outflowing gas so that it only escapes away above and below the stars. This apparently happens in episodes because the nebula has two distinct nested hourglass-shaped structures. The bubbles of gas and dust appear brightest at the edges, giving the illusion of crab legs. The rich colors correspond to glowing hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen. This image was taken to celebrate Hubble's 29th anniversary since its launch on April 24, 1990.

Lee esta historia en español.

Full Article

In celebration of the 29th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers captured this festive, colorful look at the tentacled Southern Crab Nebula.The nebula, officially known as Hen 2-104, is located several thousand light-years from Earth in the southern hemisphere constellation of Centaurus. It appears to have two nested hourglass-shaped structures that were sculpted by a whirling pair of stars in a binary system. The duo consists of an aging red giant star and a burned-out star, a white dwarf. The red giant is shedding its outer layers. Some of this ejected material ...

Read More on NASA.gov

Callout: Full Press Release

Visit NASA Science to view the full news release including article text and associated Hubble imagery, graphics, scientific visualizations, videos, captions, text descriptions, and other information.

News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-26555. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.

End callout
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google

Contact our News Team 

Contact our Outreach Office