eso_eso0310c April 9th, 2003
Credit: ESO
The nebula around the hot double star BAT99-49 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), obtained in January 2002 with the FORS1 multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m VLT MELIPAL telescope at the Paranal Observatory (Chile). It is based on three exposures through narrow-band optical (interference) filters that isolate the light from specific atoms and ions. In this rendering, the blue colour represents the light from singly ionized Helium (He II; wavelength 468.6 nm; exposure time 45 min), green corresponds to doubly ionized oxygen ([O III]; 495.7 + 500.7 nm; 5 min) and red to hydrogen atoms (H; H-alpha line at 656.2 nm; 5 min). Of these three ions, He II is the tracer of high excitation, i.e. the bluest areas of the nebula are the hottest. The sky field measures 400 x 400 square arcsec ; the original pixel size on the 2k x 2k CCD is 0.23 arcsec. North is up and east to the left.
Provider: European Southern Observatory
Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0310c/
Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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