Well, it’s been a long time coming, but here finally is part 6 of the top 100 Hubble
images series.
And today we are going to be looking at some of the most bizarre images Hubble has taken.
And when I say bizarre, I am talking about images that have just made me say out loud
“what the…”
So without further ado, here is number 29 of the series, NGC 6960 or the Veil Nebula.
This astonishingly coloured web of filaments is in fact a small portion of the Witch’s
Broom Nebula, which in turn is part of the huge nearby nebula known as Cygnus Loop.
Cygnus loop is only 1,500 light years away from us, very close by astronomical standards.
It is a giant supernova remnant - or the remains of a dead star - that exploded about 10,000
years ago.
Since then it has expanded to cover an area that is as wide as 6 full moons in the night
sky.
Sadly though, this nebula is also quite faint and is not visible with the naked eye.
As always with Hubble images, the bright colours are representative of the ionised atoms in
the image.
Blue is oxygen, green is sulphur and red is hydrogen.
The ionisation of the atoms comes from the shockwave of the supernova, blasting debris
600,000kmph into surrounding gas, heating it to millions of degrees.
As this gas cools, it releases the wavelengths of light that then get picked up by Hubble.
To me this nebula is a masterpiece.
I’m not one to able to analysis art, perhaps some of you can do better in the comments,
but the colours are just so vibrant and the filaments are so intricate, I am just blown
away by this image.
Number 30, NGC 1275.
Now this is a really odd looking galaxy.
I am much more used to seeing pretty bands in a spiral galaxy, or at least galaxies that
look somewhat symmetrical.
These filamentary structures here though are just randomly going wherever they please,
seemingly disconnected from their parent galaxy.
Well it seems disconnected because this part of the image here is in fact a separate galaxy,
roughly 200,000 light years in front of the larger background galaxy.
The smaller galaxy is known as a high velocity system, speeding towards the background galaxy
at 3000km/s.
At one point in the future, there is going to be an almighty collision between the two.
Going back to the filaments, scientists are puzzled as to why and how they exist without
either warming up, dissipating or forming stars.
It is thought this is due to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, a
monster black hole at 800 million solar masses.
The black hole may be able to suspend the gas in the filaments using its huge magnetic
field, which according to models have survived for 100 million years.
The galaxy itself is massive; one of the biggest types that we know of.
This image is about 260,000ly across and NGC 1275 is found 237 million ly away.
Number 31, IC 2497 or Hanny’s Voorwerp.
The galaxy itself looks normal enough, but what’s all this green at the bottom of the
image?
Now this explanation is seriously bizarre.
The green blobs, or Hanny’s Voorwerp which means Hanny’s Object in Dutch, is the visible
part of a gas streamer that stretches 300,000ly around the galaxy.
I say visible part, because what is thought to be a flashlight like beam of light from
the galaxy's core has illuminated this section.
The flashlight is thought to have come from a quasar, a first for this series.
Very basically, a quasar is a super massive black hole that is emitting an absolutely
huge amount of electromagnetic radiation in all the different wavelengths.
We are talking 10^41 watts, thousands of times greater than the whole Milky Way combined.
In this image it is theorised that a smaller galaxy bumped into IC 2497, causing a lot
of gas to fall into its supermassive black hole.
This sudden increase in gas falling into the black hole causes it to “turn on” as a
quasar, emitting a beam of light like a cone onto Hanny’s Voorwerp.
Gas streams away from the parent galaxy, impacting Hanny’s Voorwerp, triggering star formation.
This star formation is actually why the tips of this gas cloud are a different colour.
The gas itself is green because in this image it is ionised oxygen atoms.
The quasar has since shut down so it’s not visible anymore, but the light is still reflecting
off Hanny’s Voorwerp as we speak.
The quasar is the closest one that we know of, although it is still 730 million ly away.
The next most active one is 1.7 billion ly away.
Number 31, and oh wow.
This is the Twin Jet Nebula, or PN M2-9, and although I’ve seen this image lots in the
research for this video, I’m still amazed that this is something in space right now.
This is a planetary nebula, and is the result of what happens when one star in a binary
star system ejects its outer shell.
Astronomers theorise that the gravity of one star pulls some of the gas from the surface
of the other and flings it into a thin, dense disk extending into space.
This time lapse sequence shows a jet move within the structure over the course of several
years.
It’s this jet which is thought the give the nebula its shape.
The star which ejected its shell is now a cooling off red giant, which will eventually
become a white dwarf.
The Twin Jet Nebula is about 2,100 ly away from us.
Number 32, is a giant space bubble known as NGC 7635.
To me this kind of looks like a giant marble, many light years across.
Somehow you just don’t expect to find bubbles in space, but here is one and it is gorgeous.
The area is known as an HII region, or a star forming area.
This whole nebula around the bubble is a molecular cloud, cold gas and dust.
The bubble itself is caused by stellar wind from this massive and hot star in the centre
of the bubble, pushing the gas and dust in the nebula away from the star.
But, the molecular cloud is resisting with its own internal pressure.
What we are witnessing here is a pushing contest between the molecular cloud and the stellar
wind.
The edge of the bubble is ionised atoms of the cloud, the front line of where this battle
is taking place.
Put into this perspective, the star is trying to free itself from the nebula by blasting
it away.
In a few million years, we will see what becomes of this battle.
NGC 7635 is about 10,000ly away.
Number 33, and we are coming to an exceptionally odd looking galaxy called NGC 1512.
Now this image is really pixelated because I have zoomed in a lot.
But this looks like it could be the whole galaxy right?
Well it’s not.
Zooming out reveals this is not the only part of the galaxy, it’s got another outer ring
all the way out here.
This by itself looks weird enough; you have a halo of stars around the inner ring which
dims the further out you go to this outer ring.
You also have these two bars of dust seemingly connecting the rings together, it kind of
looks like a giant eyeball.
But wait, there’s more.
There is a neighbour galaxy called NGC 1510 right here next to it.
Or is it next to it?
Zooming out again reveals we are still only looking at half of NGC 1512 in that last image.
It is crazy, the galaxy has another section of spiral arms outside of the outer ring,
which means the smaller galaxy is actually within the bigger one and they are really
in the process of merging.
This has been going on for 400 million years already, and explains why the outer arms are
so extended and why the galaxy looks as weird as it does.
Eventually, the smaller galaxy will merge with the bigger one and they will become one.
NGC 1512 is about 39 million ly away from us.
Number 34, and the last image for this episode.
Now what do you think this could be?
Birth of a star maybe?
Well while it is not known with certainty, it is thought this spectacular image is in
fact a star shortly before it ejects its outermost shell into a planetary nebula.
What we are looking at here is the Egg Nebula, or a protoplanetary nebula.
This stage of a star’s life is very short, only lasting a few thousand years, plus it
is very dim, which means there are only a few of them that we know of.
What you will notice is the disk of dust surrounding the central star, and where there are gaps
in the disk, the star shines through like spotlights, illuminating the nebula.
The onion layers in the surrounding nebula are thought to be parts of the outer layer
of the dying star that have been ejected every couple of hundred years.
The layers only reach out for a tenth of a light year, so this object is really small.
The Egg Nebula is found about 2,000 ly away.
Now, the way I have been doing this is by going through the top 100 zip file on the
Hubble website, but they have since updated this file since I’ve started this series.
So now I’m just picking my favourites until I get to 100.
If you are a patreon and want to pick which images get included, I’m going to create
a post which you can comment the links to.
This is one way I want to say thanks for supporting my channel, by getting the community more
involved.
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Thanks for watching!
Doing this video has reawakened my love for Hubble so no doubt you will be seeing more
of this kind of thing in the future.
If you liked the video, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything in the future.
All the best!
And see you next time.