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File:Pistol star and nebula.jpg

Pistol_star_and_nebula.jpg (505 × 508 pixels, file size: 246 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: One of the intrinsically brightest stars in our galaxy appears as the bright white dot in the center of this image taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) was needed to take the picture, because the star is hidden at the galactic center, behind obscuring dust. NICMOS' infrared vision penetrated the dust to reveal the star, which is glowing with the radiance of 10 million suns.

The image also shows one of the most massive stellar eruptions ever seen in space. The radiant star has enough raw power to blow off two expanding shells (magenta) of gas equal to the mass of several of our suns. The largest shell is so big (4 light-years) it would stretch nearly all the way from our Sun to the next nearest star. The outbursts seen by Hubble are estimated to be only 4,000 and 6,000 years old, respectively.

Despite such a tremendous mass loss, astronomers estimate the extraordinary star may presently be 100 times more massive than our Sun, and may have started with as much as 200 solar masses of material, but it is violently shedding much of its mass.

The star is 25,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Despite its great distance, the star would be visible to the naked eye as a modest 4th magnitude object if it were not for the dust between it and the Earth.

This false-colored image is a composite of two separately filtered images taken with the NICMOS, on September 13,1997. The field of view is 4.8 light-years across, at the star's distance of 25,000 light-years. Resolution is 0.075 arc seconds per pixel (picture element).
Date
Source http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1997/33/image/a/ (image link)
Author Don F. Figer (UCLA) and NASA

Licensing

Public domain
This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use.

The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org.

For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag.

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inception

13 September 1997

File history

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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current05:12, 29 November 2015Thumbnail for version as of 05:12, 29 November 2015505 × 508 (246 KB)PlanetUserReverted to version as of 11:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
05:12, 29 November 2015Thumbnail for version as of 05:12, 29 November 20152,400 × 2,999 (709 KB)PlanetUseroriginal source from http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-1997-33-a-print.jpg
11:17, 13 August 2012Thumbnail for version as of 11:17, 13 August 2012505 × 508 (246 KB)Fabian RRRRsource: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9733a/ better suited copyright
19:58, 20 September 2005Thumbnail for version as of 19:58, 20 September 2005505 × 508 (196 KB)Wmahan~commonswikiAn image of the Pistol Star and Pistol Nebula, from [http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/1997/33/images/a/formats/web.jpg]. Taken 13 September, 1997 by NICMOS. This is a false-color composite image. See [http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/r

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