December 24, 2013
On this day, the universe repeated one of its rarest tricks: it arranged dust, light, memory, and possibility into a person no equation...
Sharpless 308: Star Bubble
Birthday · December 24, 2013
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APOD published December 24, 2013. Credit: Jeff Husted. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to violet hues. Budget Universe: Free APOD 2014 Calendar in PDF format
Image credit: Jeff Husted