A disc in the Ant Nebula

Eso_eso0742a_1024

eso_eso0742a September 27th, 2007

Credit: ESO

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, astronomers have uncovered a disc in the heart of the Ant Nebula. The disc seems, however, too 'skinny' to explain how the nebula got its intriguing ant-like shape. The image on the right shows a previously taken image of the Ant Nebula, in the mid-infrared, with the VLT Imager and Spectrometer for the mid-InfraRed (VISIR). The image on the left shows a model of the dusty disc the astronomers uncovered with the MID-infrared Interferometric instrument (MIDI), which combined the light from two 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescopes. The lower part of the image representing the southern lobe is brighter, for this lobe is closer to our line-of-sight. The major axis of the flat, nearly edge-on disc is perpendicular to the axis of the bipolar lobes of the nebula. The disc extends from about 9 times the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun (9 Astronomical Units or 9 AU) to more than 500 AU.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0742a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Ant Nebula
Subject - Milky Way
Nebula > Type > Planetary

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red VLT (VISIR) Infrared (Mid-IR) 12.0 µm
VISIR data relates to the right image. The left image is a model of the inner disk which was observed using MIDI.
Spectrum_ir1
Red
Eso_eso0742a_1280
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ID
eso0742a
Subject Category
B.4.1.3  
Subject Name
Ant Nebula
Credits
ESO
Release Date
2007-09-27T00:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0742a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Very Large Telescope
Instrument
VISIR
Color Assignment
Red
Band
Infrared
Bandpass
Mid-IR
Central Wavelength
12000
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
V
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
2141.0, 1196.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.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
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
eso0742a
Metadata Date
2016-07-19T14:01:44+02:00
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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