The gorgeous Eagle Nebula is one of the most iconic objects in the cosmos, known affectionately as the Pillars of Creation. One of the most famous images ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope depicts the Pillars, and now Hubble has returned to image the nebula once again to celebrate its 35th anniversary.
The full image, shown below, depicts a striking structure of dust and gas which forms one small section of the Eagle Nebula. At 9.5 light-years tall, it is enormous, and is formed of cold hydrogen gas with new stars being born amongst the clouds of the nebula.
“The heart of the nebula, which is located beyond the edge of this image, is home to a cluster of young stars,” Hubble scientists explain. “These stars have excavated an immense cavity in the center of the nebula, shaping otherworldly pillars and globules of dusty gas. This particular feature extends like a pointing finger toward the center of the nebula and the rich young star cluster embedded there.”
It is the formation of these young stars which creates the sculpted appearance of the nebula. When stars are young, they are hot and bright, giving off large amounts of radiation and sending out particles in an effect called stellar wind. These stellar winds carve elaborate shapes into the clouds of dust and gas nearby, creating the otherworldly shapes. Some gas becomes ionized by the radiation from these stars, causing it to glow brightly. But where the dust is thickly clumped, it becomes opaque, creating the dark structure seen in the image.
The different colors in the image represent different elements that are present in the nebula. The blue shades in the background come from ionized oxygen, while the red colors at the bottom of the image are from hydrogen. However, the dark structure seen here won’t last forever, as radiation from bright young stars will eventually erode the pillar away.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.