Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2020 May 18

                        Journey into the Cosmic Reef
        Video Credit: NASA's GSFC, SVS; Lead Producer & Music: Joseph
                             DePasquale (STScI)

   Explanation: What would you see if you could fly into the Cosmic Reef?
   The nebular cloud NGC 2014 appear to some like an ocean reef that
   resides in the sky, specifically in the LMC, the largest satellite
   galaxy of our Milky Way Galaxy. A detailed image of this distant nebula
   was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to help commemorate 30 years of
   investigating the cosmos. Data and images of this cosmic reef have been
   combined into the three-dimensional model flown through in the featured
   video. The computer animated sequence first takes you past a star
   cluster highlighted by bright blue stars, below pillars of gas and dust
   slowly being destroyed by the energetic light and winds emitted by
   these massive stars. Filaments of gas and dust are everywhere, glowing
   in the red light of hydrogen and nitrogen. The animation next takes you
   to the blue-colored nebula NGC 2020, glowing in light emitted by oxygen
   and surrounding a Wolf-Rayet star about 200,000 times brighter than our
   Sun -- a nebula thought to be the ejected outer atmosphere of this
   stellar monster. As the animation concludes, the virtual camera pivots
   to show that NGC 2020 has a familiar hourglass shape when viewed from
   the side.

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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

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