August 16, 2012
Somewhere between the hydrogen and the starlight, between the gravity and the grace, the universe conspired to bring you into being.
NGC 6888: The Crescent Nebula
Birthday · August 16, 2012
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APOD published August 16, 2012. Credit: Astro Anarchy. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. This colorful portrait of the nebula uses narrow band image data combined in the Hubble palette. It shows emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in the wind-blown nebula in red, green and blue hues. NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away. New APOD Mirror: In Farsi from Iran
Image credit: Astro Anarchy