The Cone Nebula from
Hubble
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the
Day
Stars are forming in the
gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing
shapes abound in stellar
nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic
winds from newborn stars.
The Cone Nebula, a well-known
example, lies within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264. The Cone was captured in
unprecedented detail in this close-up
composite of several observations from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
While the Cone Nebula, about 2,500
light-years away in
Monoceros, is around 7 light-years long, the region pictured
here surrounding the cone's blunted head is a mere 2.5 light-years across.
In our neck of the galaxy that
distance is just over half way from the Sun to its nearest stellar neighbor,
the Alpha Centauri star
system.
The massive star NGC 2264 IRS, seen by
Hubble's infrared camera in 1997, is the likely source of the wind sculpting
the Cone Nebula and lies off the top of the image. The Cone Nebula's reddish veil
is produced
by glowing hydrogen gas.
