esahubble_opo9636b2 November 26th, 1996
Credit: Curt Struck and Philip Appleton (Iowa State University), Kirk Borne(Hughes STX Corporation), and Ray Lucas ( Space Telescope Science Institute), and NASA/ESA
The Cartwheel's nucleus is shown in this Hubble Space Telescope color-coded image. The comet-like knots of gas are mostly confined to the core's left side. They are the blue knots arranged in a semi-circular pattern around the center of the nucleus. The 'heads' are a few hundred light-years across; the tails are more than 1, 000 light-years long, the longest of which is nearly 5, 000 light-years. The structures look like comets because they probably were spawned by a collision between high-speed and slower-moving material. This collision created an arrowhead-shaped pattern called a bow shock, which is similar to the wake of a boat speeding across a lake.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9636b2/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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