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Old 21-02-2007, 09:10 PM
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circumpolar (Matt)
and around we go

circumpolar is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Quakers Hill, NSW
Posts: 426
Wink Carina gives us the Birdie!?

I found this pic on Astronomy Picture of the Day. It is an area of the Carina Nebula environs.

I think it looks as though we have been given the finger!

Maybe there is someone up there.

Explanation: This dense cloud of gas and dust is being deleted. Likely, within a few million years, the intense light from bright stars will have boiled it away completely. Stars not yet formed in the molecular cloud's interior will then stop growing. The cloud has broken off of part of the greater Carina Nebula, a star forming region about 8000 light years away. Newly formed stars are visible nearby, their images reddened by blue light being preferentially scattered by the pervasive dust. This unusually-coloured image spans about two light years and was taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 1999. This Carina sub-cloud is particularly striking partly because its clear definition stimulates the human imagination (e.g. it could be perceived as a superhero flying through a cloud, arm up, with a saved person in tow below).
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