Wednesday, 23 May, 2018

The Bubble Nebula

Posted on Friday, 11 December, 2015Monday, 21 August, 2017 by Zheluo Cai

The Bubble Nebula

Also called NGC 7635, Sharpless 162, or Caldwell 11, is a H II region emission nebula in the Cassiopeia constellation. It lies close to the direction of the open cluster Messier 52 and at a distance of 11,000 light years from Earth. It was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work.

The Bubble Nebula is one of three shells of gas surrounding the massive star SAO20575, the bright star near the center of the bubble. Energetic radiation from the star ionizes the shell, causing it to glow. The star is thought to have a mass of 44 Solar masses, with a radius 15 times that of the Sun and is 398,000 times more luminous. Its estimated surface temperature is 37,500 K. The magenta wisps near the bottom-right of the photo are the remnants of a supernova that exploded thousands of years ago. SAO 20575 is a Wolf-Rayet 8.71 magnitude star, a class O star which will soon end its life in a supernova explosion. It has a strong stellar wind and emits an enormous amount of energy. Wolf-Rayet stars typically expel significant portions of their mass in this phase of their evolutionary cycle. They can lose as much as two thirds of their mass before exploding as supernovae.

This tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is composed from narrowband image data, recording emission from the region’s ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms. To create the three colour image, hydrogen and oxygen emission were used for red and blue and combined to create the green channel.

Credits: Constellation Guide, NASA, Wikipedia.

Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri.
Image Credit & Copyright: Gordon Mandell. The globular star cluster Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) is some 15,000 light-years away. 150 light-years in diameter, the cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun. Omega Cen is the largest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way.

The Lepcha are also called the Rongkup meaning the children of God are among the indigenous peoples of Sikkim. Lepchas are found in western and southwestern Bhutan, Tibet, Darjeeling, the Mechi Zone of eastern Nepal, and in the hills of West Bengal. They were believed in the bone faith or mune faith based on the spirits, good and bad. They used to worship spirits of mountains, rivers and forests like any other tribes. Perhaps, this could be the reason why these people prefer to live in the healthy natural world. Most Lepchas are Buddhist, a religion brought by the Bhutias from the north, although a large number of Lepchas have today adopted Christianity.

The flag of Luxembourg consists of three horizontal stripes, red, white and blue, and was first used between 1845 and 1848. It was officially adopted on 23 June 1972. As a landlocked nation, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg had little need for a national flag until the middle of the 19th century. Its heraldic banner, dating back to the early 13th century, was composed of horizontal stripes of white and blue with a rampant red lion. That banner, however, represented the dukes of Luxembourg and not the nation’s people. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Luxembourg, which had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, became a separate country under the protection of the Netherlands. The tricolour flag is almost identical to that of the Netherlands, except that it is longer and its blue stripe is a lighter shade.

Benin - Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions Friday, 11 May, 2018
Exercise normal precautions in Benin. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory. Exercise increased caution in: Urban areas due to crime. Beaches due to crime Read the Safety and Security section on the country information page. If you decide to travel to Benin: Do not physically resist any robbery attempt. Use caution […]
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Exercise normal precautions in Panama. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory. Do not travel to: Parts of the Mosquito Gulf due to crime. Parts of the Darién Region due to crime. Read the Safety and Security section on the country information page. If you decide to travel to Panama: Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment […]

Eugène Galien-Laloue (1854–1941) was a French artist of French-Italian parents and was born in Paris on December 11, 1854. He was a populariser of street scenes, usually painted in autumn or winter, of the early 1900s, accurately representing the era in which he lived: a happy, bustling Paris, la Belle Époque, with horse-drawn carriages, trolley cars and its first omnibuses. Galien-Laloue's works are valued not only for their contribution to 20th-century art but for the actual history, which they document. The Paris Arc de Triomphe was painted in 1941. His work can be seen at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Louvier; Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Rochelle; Mulhouse, France.

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