A disc in the Ant Nebula
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.
Credit:ESO
Over de afbeelding
Id: | eso0742a |
Type: | Observatie |
Publicatiedatum: | 27 september 2007 |
Gerelateerde berichten: | eso0742 |
Grootte: | 2141 x 1196 px |
Over het object
Naam: | Ant Nebula |
Type: | Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary |
Afstand: | 8000 lichtjaren |
Categorie: | Nebulae |
Achtergrond
Kleuren & filters
Band | Golflengte | Telescoop |
---|---|---|
Infrarood Mid-IR | 12 μm | Very Large Telescope VISIR |
Noten: VISIR data relates to the right image. The left image is a model of the inner disk which was observed using MIDI.