The Trifid Nebula (M20) Captured 14 June 2016
The incredibly beautiful Trifid Nebula is located in the constellation Sagittarius. It is 5000 light years away. It has a diameter of approximately 40 light years. Charles Messier, an avid comet enthusiast of the 18th century, cataloged astronomical objects that fellow comet hunters might confuse with comets. He termed the objects "faint fuzzies" in his catalog of "nuisances." With his primitive telescope, Messier cataloged the Trifid Nebula in 1764. The Trifid Nebula has a nearby neighbor, the larger Lagoon Nebula. While it is possible they both had a common origin, astronomers are not certain. Trifid means three lobes and is assigned to this nebula because of its three petaled appearance. At roughly 300,000 years old, the Trifid Nebula is a relative youngster in cosmological terms. Nebulae fall into one of four classes: 1. Diffuse Nebulae (with Emission Nebulae and Reflection Nebulae subdivisions) is the predominant category, 2. Dark Nebulae, 3. Supernova Remanent Nebulae and 4. Planetary Nebulae. The Trifid Nebula is the trifecta of nebulae, a rare combination of three types of nebulae. It contains an emission nebula, the hydrogen rich portion that glows red. In that portion, hydrogen gas is energized and set to glowing by powerful ultraviolet radiation emanating from a triple star system at the nebula's core, which is visible in the image. There is a faint blue upper region (barely visible in the image) that is a reflective nebula. It does not generate its own light, but reflects light from surrounding stars. The dark nebula portion is composed of dark meandering lanes of dust that absorb and block light coming from the rear and which divide up the nebula, giving the nebula its 3-lobed appearance. The Trifid Nebula is an accomplished stellar nursery, giving rise to large numbers of embryonic and newborn stars. In 2005, the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed "30 powerful embryonic stars and 120 smaller newborn stars throughout the Trifid Nebula." On the lower left side of the image, where the mustache meets the chin, a stellar jet protrudes into the cosmos. Stellar Jets are streams of gases that are expelled during star formation. |
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