Keith Taylor and Mike Scarrott called it the Boomerang Nebula in 1980 after observing it with a large ground-based telescope in Australia. It is the only object found so far that has a temperature lower than the background radiation. Even the -270C background glow from the Big Bang is warmer than this nebula. With a temperature of -272C, it is only 1 degree warmer than absolute zero (the lowest limit for all temperatures). In 1995, using the 15-metre Swedish ESO Submillimetre Telescope in Chile, astronomers Sahai and Nyman revealed that it is the coldest place in the Universe found so far. The Boomerang Nebula is one of the Universe's peculiar places. Planetary nebulae form around a bright, central star when it expels gas in the last stages of its life. It is in the constellation of Centaurus, 5000 light-years from Earth. This NASA/ ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a young planetary nebula known (rather curiously) as the Boomerang Nebula. The NASA/ ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is yet another example of how Hubble's sharp eye reveals surprising details in celestial objects. The next step now for scientists is to find other similar phenomena that would be ever colder still.Īs for the Boomerang Nebula, the central star will eventually become a white dwarf (opens in new tab).The Boomerang Nebula is a young planetary nebula and the coldest object found in the Universe so far. The fact that it ejects its outer layer from two small points is also significant because air expands and cools more rapidly through a tiny opening. "The only way to eject so much mass and at such extreme speeds is from the gravitational energy of two interacting stars which would explain the puzzles properties of the ultra cold outflow," he said in a statement by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (opens in new tab). Sahai's work found that the low temperature was being caused by the rapid acceleration of gas but he also sought to explain why the expulsion was happening so fast, believing it to be a dying red giant (opens in new tab) for the first time.Īccording to Sahai - who works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (opens in new tab) (JPL) in Pasadena, California - a small companion star could have plunged into the red giant. The temperature was then confirmed by astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (opens in new tab) (ALMA) in Chile in 2013 but it was Sahai's study published in the Astrophysical Journal (opens in new tab) in 2017 that shed extra light on what may have happened. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) confirmed the temperature of the coldest place in the universe. As such, in 1995, a team headed by Sahai using the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (opens in new tab) in Chile (decommissioned in 2003), sought to test the theory on the Boomerang Nebula, which led to the temperature being determined. Sahai said that wind from the star could expand rapidly as it flowed outward, causing the temperature to drop dramatically, making it something of a cosmic refrigerator. But before astronomer Raghvendra Sahai knew this extra detail, he was already hard at work, predicting the existence of cold regions in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal in 1990. In 1980, when astronomers Keith Taylor and Mike Scarrott began to study the nebula using the Anglo-Australian ground-based telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory (opens in new tab), they didn't know at that point that it would be the coldest place in the universe but its boomerang-shape ensured it - at least - had a natural name.Īt least, it seemed like it did until it was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (opens in new tab) in greater detail in 1998, showing a closer resemblance to a bow-tie or hourglass. The Hubble Space Telescope's visible data is overlaid in purple, while the orange "boomerang" has been provided by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
The nebula gets its name thanks to its shape.
0 kommentar(er)
