Nebula: The Sun before it Was on Fire.

Our Sun has reached the middle for its lifespan right now. Meaning our Sun might soon experience it’s own middle life crisis…. Ok, maybe not. But every wondered how this ball of fire was, when it was young.

We, know that it wasn’t born in the way you and I were. It certainly didn’t have a ‘parent’. Or else we would have detected a presence of secondary older star in or very close to our system. But it get the seed it needed for the it’s formation.

A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets. Some nebulae come from the gas and dust thrown out by the explosion of a dying star, such as a supernova. Other nebulae are regions where new stars are beginning to form. For this reason, some nebulae are called “star nurseries.”

Humans have given quite interesting names to these seeds of future stars like our Sun. Mostly on the bases of how they look from afar, which in my opinion is not the most brightest way but it is the most creative way for sure.

Well, it’s better than calling them numbers.

Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) – The Eye Of God Nebula

The closest known nebula to Earth is called the Helix Nebula, also called the Eye of God. It is the remnant of a dying star—possibly one like the Sun. It is approximately 650 light-years, lies in the constellation of Aquarius.

Although the Helix looks very much like a doughnut, studies have shown that it possibly consists of at least two separate discs with outer rings and filaments. The brighter inner disc seems to be expanding at about 62,137 miles per hour (100 000 km/h), and probably formed over 12,000years. The main ring of the Helix Nebula is about two light-years across, or half the distance between the Sun and its closest stellar neighbor.

Eagle Nebula (M16) – The Star Queen Nebula

Messier 16 (M16 for short), is a cluster of stars and an area of active star formation about 5,700 light-years from Earth (it had previously been considered to reside 7,000 light-years away, but a recent study using data from the Gaia telescope published in the Astrophysical Journal in Jan. 2019 suggests its quite a bit closer.) To me, this looks more like the crown of a Queen though.

The Eagle Nebula is located in the constellation Serpens and covers an area of 70 by 55 light-years. It is home to the iconic Pillars of Creation, more like the hand in my opinion, made famous by an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.

Parts of the Eagle Nebula are emission nebulas, meaning that the clouds of gas and dust are so hot they produce their own light. Other parts are dark nebulas, which are made of cold gas and are only visible because of the silhouettes they create against the nebula’s glowing backdrop.

Orion Nebula (M42)

Most nebulae – clouds of interstellar gas and dust – are difficult if not impossible to see with the unaided eye or even binoculars. But the Orion Nebula is in a class nearly all by itself. It’s visible to the unaided eye on a dark, moonless night. To me, it looks like a portal to another dimension or perhaps a huge bird with its wings spread wide. The star-gazing aficionado Stephen James O’Meara described it as: “angel’s breath against a frosted sky.”

It lies roughly 1,300 light-years from Earth.

At some 30 to 40 light-years in diameter, this great nebulous cocoon is giving birth to perhaps a thousand stars. A young open star cluster, whose stars were born together in the gas cloud and are still loosely bound by gravity, appears within the nebula. Some people refer to it as the Orion Nebula Star Cluster. In 2012, an international team of astronomers suggested this cluster in the Orion Nebula might have a black hole at its heart.

Four brightest stars in the Orion Nebula, known as the Trapezium. The light of the young, hot Trapezium stars illuminate the Orion Nebula. These stars are only a million or so years old, babies on the scale of star lifetimes.

But most of the stars in this emerging cluster are veiled behind the Orion Nebula itself, the great stellar nursery in Orion’s Sword.

Carina Nebula ( NGC 3372) – Eta Carinae Nebula

Complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina, located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The nebula is approximately 8,500 light-years (2,600 pc) from Earth. Standing at an enormous length of 300 light years. The Carina Nebula was discovered by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope.

Though also being know as Eta Carinae Nebula. I like to call it the Yin-Yang Nebula or the Yearning.

An enormous cloud of gas and dust home to several massive and bright stars, including at least a dozen that are 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. It is an emission nebula, meaning that the intense radiation from its stars ionizes the gas and causes it to glow. That gas is widely and thinly spread out over a large area, earning it the added designation of a diffuse nebula.

Carina is a dynamic area of the sky with bursts of star formation occurring alongside star death. As stars form and produce ultraviolet radiation, their stellar winds disperse the gas and dust around them, sometimes forming dark, dusty cloaks and sometimes creating empty patches for the stars to become clearly visible.

The Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus)

Perhaps inspired by the Tarantula itself. And after comparing the two. This nebula looks like an abstract version of the spider.

30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

standing an a radius of more than 3times of Carina Nebula at 931 light years. In fact if this enormous complex of stars, gas and dust were at the distance of the Orion Nebula it would be visible during the day and cover a quarter of the sky.

Hubble observations show star clusters of various ages, from about 2 million to 25 million years old. Collectively, the stars comprise a bulk material millions of times the mass of the Sun. 30 Doradus contains one of the most rapidly rotating stars and the fastest moving stars ever observed.

The region’s sparkling centerpiece is a giant, young star cluster named NGC 2070, only 2 million to 3 million years old. Its stellar inhabitants number roughly 500,000. The cluster is a hotbed for young, massive stars. Its dense core, known as R136, is packed with several dozen of the most massive stars known, each about 100 times the mass of the Sun and about 10 times as hot.

The cluster also harbors many thousands of smaller stars. For many years, it defied analysis from ground-based observations because of the facilities’ inadequate resolution. It was once even suggested to be a single “superstar,” about 3,000 times the mass of the Sun, until high-resolution images showed that it was actually many smaller stars.

This is all for now, stay tuned for more and have a great day ahead.