March 23, 2022
You were not dropped into the cosmos as a stranger. You came from it entirely: borrowed from stars, carried by Earth, warmed by the Sun, and...
The Bubble Nebula from Hubble
Birthday · March 23, 2022
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APOD published March 23, 2022. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Massive stars can blow bubbles. The featured image shows perhaps the most famous of all star-bubbles, NGC 7635, also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 7-light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and left of the Bubble's center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and some 45-times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie a mere 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a reprocessed composite of previously acquired Hubble Space Telescope image data. Birthday Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)