Monday, April 6, 2009

Reaching for the Light


Check this out!

Read more about this awesome nebula and a pulsar here.

Meantime, here's a quote from the article:

The red light (is) actually a neighboring gas cloud, RCW 89, energized into glowing by the fingers of the PSR B1509-58 nebula, astronomers believe.

The scene, which spans 150 light-years, is about 17,000 light years away, so what we see now is how it actually looked 17,000 years ago, and that light is just arriving here.

image courtesy of NASA

2 comments:

Alexander Field said...

This looks eerily like a hand reaching out to grab a hot coal! Wow, thanks for posting this cool picture - perhaps one to inspire a story of some kind? : )

Keanan Brand said...

I have a downloaded photo of the God's Eye nebula, too, which is freakishly cool. Yep, great story material!