Posted on 04/14/2007 12:38:04 PM PDT by anymouse
If symmetry is a sign of splendor, then the newly discovered Red Square nebula is one of the most beautiful objects in the universe.
Seen in the infrared, the nebula resembles a giant, glowing red box in the sky, with a bright white inner core. A dying star called MWC 922 is located at the system's center and spewing its innards from opposite poles into space. (A nebula is an interstellar cloud of gas, dust and plasma where stars can both emerge and die.)
'This spectacular event is the death of a star,' said study team member James Lloyd of Cornell University.
After MWC 922 ejects most of its material into space, it will contract into a dense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, shrouded by clouds of its own remains.
The Red Square nebula discovery is detailed in the April 13 issue of the journal Science.
Almost perfect
What is particularly astonishing about the Red Square, the researchers say, is the degree of symmetry seen in lines, or 'rungs,' that bisect its surface. The rungs appear as shadows, and their makeup is uncertain.
'The high degree of regularity in this case may point to the intriguing possibility that these bands are shadows cast by periodic ripples or waves on the surface of an inner disk close to the star at the heart of the system," Lloyd said.
The Red Square ranks among the most symmetrical objects ever observed by scientists. 'If you fold things across the principle diagonal axis, you get an almost perfect reflection symmetry,' said study leader Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney in Australia. 'This makes the Red Square nebula the most symmetrical object of comparable complexity ever imaged.'
The Red Square's extreme symmetry suggests the star's surroundings are extremely still and not buffeted by external stellar winds or other turbulence.
The researchers propose that similar conditions are contributing to the extreme symmetry of another system, the Red Rectangle, whose central star is cooler than that of the Red Square.
'The Red Rectangle is mostly symmetrical, but it has some asymmetries,' Lloyd told SPACE.com. 'It wasn't clear whether it was because the outflow was very symmetrical or whether material in the outflow was encountering some other material' which introduced the symmetry.
The new findings suggest the system's perfect form results from an even outflow of gas. 'The reason the Red Square remains so symmetrical is that there is no material that has interfered with the outflow, so it has preserved the symmetry it was born with,' Lloyd said.
Adaptive optics
Tuthill and Lloyd spotted the Red Square using the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory and the Keck-2 Telescope in Hawaii.
Both telescopes utilize a relatively new type of imaging called adaptive optics, which uses a laser guide star as a reference and a rapidly deforming mirror to correct image distortions from the Earth's atmosphere in real time.
space/astronomy ping
Looks like neither a square nor a cross to me.
Two cones point to point...
Dammmnnnn......... In a universe governed by gravity you expect to see spheres and not cubes, gotta be some unusual explanation.
Looks like a lens issue to me. Some surrounding stars have spikes all oriented alike.
I’m going to guess that those are diffraction spikes from the vanes holding the secondary mirror in place.
“I’m going to guess that those are diffraction spikes from the vanes holding the secondary mirror in place.”
Thats exactly what I was thinking.
Red Square is not symmetrical at all- not with lenin’s tomb and the mosque of basil the blessed.
The kind of outline you get when a glowing stick is made to wobble about its mid-point.
Or a rapidly rotating wobbling black hole/massive star ejecting matter that has been too rapidly accumulated to be absorbed from the poles.
Cool. A sign of the cross in the heavens. Roman history was changed because of something like this, I wonder if there are any modern parallels in biblical prophecy.
I continue to be amazed at the unparalled splendor and majesty of His creation. Who knows what is out there that He has made that has yet to be discovered?
"Tuthill and Lloyd spotted the Red Square using the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory and the Keck-2 Telescope in Hawaii.
Both telescopes utilize a relatively new type of imaging called adaptive optics, which uses a laser guide star as a reference and a rapidly deforming mirror to correct image distortions from the Earth's atmosphere in real time. Adaptive optics 'acts like a myopia cure for a telescope,' Lloyd said "
The Keck is advanced.
Probably artifact free.
But these images
were made with a lot
of processing. That's always
open for error . . .
It’s the ARCO Spark!!
The overall architecture of twin opposed conical cavities (commonly known in astronomy as a "bipolar nebula") is seen to be adorned with a remarkable sequence of sharply defined linear rungs or bars. This series of rungs and conical surfaces lie nested, one within the next, down to the heart of the system, where the hyperbolic bicone surfaces are crossed by a dark lane running across the principle axis.
One particularly fascinating feature visible in the images is a series of faint radial spokes, like teeth of a comb, pointing away from the center.
"Structures such as this are rarely seen in nebulae, and the high degree of regularity in this case may point to the intriguing possibility that these bands are shadows cast by periodic ripples or waves on the surface of an inner disk close to the star at the heart of the system," said Lloyd.
[W. M. Keck Observatory Announcment]
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