The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope recently captured a nebula that is 250 light-years across and covers an area four times the size of the full moon. The Shrimp Nebula is a large stellar nursery located about 6000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It emits very faint light with wavelengths that cannot be detected by the human eye.
Also known as IC 4628, the Shrimp Nebula is an emission nebula. The gas is activated or ionized by radiation from nearby stars.
As written on the blog, Radiation from this massive star removes electrons from the hydrogen atoms in the nebula. When energized electrons return from a higher energy state to a lower energy state by recombining with a hydrogen nucleus, they emit energy in the form of light, causing gas nebula to shine.”
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Hubble Capture a small portion of the nebula in visible and invisible infrared light. He captured interesting details of the nebula’s structure, including bright regions of glowing gas. The red area in the image indicates the presence of ionized iron (FeII) emission.
This image was taken as part of a large and medium sized “protostar” survey, or Newly formed star. Astronomers used the infrared sensitivity of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to look for hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet light ionized by protostars, emission from stars, and other features.
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