United States – The Victor M. Blanco Telescope’s Dark Energy Camera (DECam) captured a “ghostly hand,” dubbed the “Hand of God,” extending from within the Milky Way toward a distant galaxy.
The “Hand of God” is actually a “globular comet,” officially known as CG 4. The “globular comet” is a difficult-to-detect subclass of the so-called “Bock’s globules,” which are isolated, dense clouds of gas and dust surrounded by hot material. And ionized, according to astronomers at NOIRLab in a statement.
Despite their name, cometary conglomerates have nothing to do with comets, but actually gained their name from the fact that material has been pulled away from these nebulae, creating a long, comet-like tail.
“Cydrocytes” are still somewhat of a mystery because the reason for their structure has not yet been definitively determined.
Scientists hypothesize that the structure of comet globules might be created by stellar winds flowing from the hot, massive stars surrounding them, or by supernovae that occur when these stars die.
The “Hand of God” is located regarding 1,300 light-years from Earth within our Milky Way galaxy and can be seen in the constellation Puppis.
“Cometary conglomerates” were first identified in 1976 through images taken using the British Schmidt telescope in Australia, but being faint and their tails covered in stardust that prevents light from passing through them, they make them particularly difficult targets for color photography.
The CG 4 nebula has a comet-like shape, with a dense head consisting of gas and dust with a diameter of regarding 1.5 light-years, and a faint elongated tail regarding 8 light-years in length. The dusty cloud contains enough material to form several sun-sized stars.
Although shrouded in secrecy, the Dark Energy Camera can spot the “Hand of God,” thanks to a hydrogen alpha filter that captures the faint glow of ionized hydrogen.
“Using a special hydrogen alpha filter, DECam can capture the faint red glow of ionized hydrogen located inside the head of CG4 and around its outer edge,” NOIRLab scientists explain. This light is produced when hydrogen becomes excited following being exposed to radiation from nearby hot, massive stars. “However, the intense radiation from these nearby massive stars gradually destroys the globular head and sweeps away the small particles that scatter the star’s light.”
While astronomers have observed cometary globoses throughout the Milky Way, the vast majority of them, including CG4, are found inside a huge patch of glowing gas called the Gum Nebula.
Although comet nebulae are found throughout the Milky Way, there is a special region known as the Gum Nebula (Gum 12) that contains regarding 32 of these structures, including CG4.
It is noteworthy that the “Gum Nebula” is a huge cloud of gas regarding 1,400 light-years away and spread across the constellations Al-Kothal and Al-Saila. This nebula is believed to be the expanding remains of a massive star that died in a supernova explosion regarding a million years ago.
“In the new image, it appears as if CG4 is regarding to devour spiral galaxy ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338),” NOIRLab scientists say. But in reality, the distance between them is regarding 100 million light-years.
Source: Science News
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2024-05-12 06:16:42
