Hubble's newest camera images ghostly star-forming pillar of gas and dust

Esahubble_heic0206c_1024

esahubble_heic0206c April 30th, 2002

Credit: NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA

Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial object is actually just a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264) - so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape - this monstrous pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture, taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long. Radiation from hot, young stars (located beyond the top of the image) has slowly eroded the nebula over millions of years. Ultraviolet light heats the edges of the dark cloud, releasing gas into the relatively empty region of surrounding space. There, additional ultraviolet radiation causes the hydrogen gas to glow, which produces the red halo of light seen around the pillar. A similar process occurs on a much smaller scale to gas surrounding a single star, forming the bow-shaped arc seen near the upper left side of the Cone. This arc, seen previously with the Hubble telescope, is 65 times larger than the diameter of our Solar System. The blue-white light from surrounding stars is reflected by dust. Background stars can be seen peeking through the evaporating tendrils of gas, while the turbulent base is pockmarked with stars reddened by dust. Over time, only the densest regions of the Cone will be left. But inside these regions, stars and planets may form. The Cone Nebula resides 2500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. The Cone is a cousin of the M16 pillars, which the Hubble telescope imaged in 1995. Consisting mainly of cold gas, the pillars in both regions resist being eroded away by the blistering ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars. Pillars like the Cone and M16 are common in large regions of star birth. Astronomers believe that these pillars may be incubators for developing stars. The ACS made this observation on 2 April 2002. The colour image is constructed from three separate images taken in blue, near-infrared, and hydrogen-alpha filters. Image credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team (H. Ford, G. Illingworth, M. Clampin, G. Hartig, T. Allen, K. Anderson, F. Bartko, N. Benitez, J. Blakeslee, R. Bouwens, T. Broadhurst, R. Brown, C. Burrows, D. Campbell, E. Cheng, N. Cross, P. Feldman, M. Franx, D. Golimowski, C. Gronwall, R. Kimble, J. Krist, M. Lesser, D. Magee, A. Martel, W. J. McCann, G. Meurer, G. Miley, M. Postman, P. Rosati, M. Sirianni, W. Sparks, P. Sullivan, H. Tran, Z. Tsvetanov, R. White, and R. Woodruff) and ESA

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0206c/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Cone Nebula NGC 2264
Subject - Milky Way
Nebula
Esahubble_heic0206c_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 6h 41m 12.4s
DEC = 9° 25’ 36.6”
Orientation
North is 4.2° CW
Field of View
3.4 x 2.6 arcminutes
Constellation
Monoceros

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (ACS) Optical (H-alpha) 658.0 nm
Green Hubble (ACS) Infrared (I) 814.0 nm
Blue Hubble (ACS) Optical (B) 435.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Red
Green
Blue
Esahubble_heic0206c_1280
×
ID
heic0206c
Subject Category
B.4  
Subject Name
Cone Nebula, NGC 2264
Credits
NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA
Release Date
2002-04-30T15:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0206c/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Distance to NGC2264 in light years from AJ (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009AJ....138..963B)
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS, ACS
Color Assignment
Red, Green, Blue
Band
Optical, Infrared, Optical
Bandpass
H-alpha, I, B
Central Wavelength
658, 814, 435
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
100.301587727, 9.42682972795
Reference Dimension
4136.0, 3102.0
Reference Pixel
2068.0, 1551.0
Scale
-1.38408590015e-05, 1.38408590015e-05
Rotation
-4.1799999999999962
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
heic0206c
Metadata Date
2003-12-09T17:06:57+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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