ALMA Images a Cosmic Ghost
Astrophotography・
The temperature of the Boomerang Nebula is about -272° Celsius. This makes it one of the coldest objects known in the Universe. When we investigated this object using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), we found that it had an interesting shape. The true shape resembles a creepy ghost. The red is the ALMA observations result; the blue background is a visible light image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Because the shape was distorted in early observations by ground-based optical telescopes, this nebula was named the Boomerang Nebula. After that it looked like a bow tie in observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, but observations by ALMA discovered yet another new aspect of this object.
Text by: Naoko Sakuma (NAOJ Chile Observatory)
Translation by: Ramsey Lundock (NAOJ)
Image Data
| Date | November 28, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Object | Boomerang Nebula |
| Telescope | ALMA, Hubble Space Telescope |
| Credit | Bill Saxton; NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA/Hubble; Raghvendra Sahai |