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Stand beside, Batman – your bat signal has nothing on a huge "bat-shadow" of the Hubble Space Telescope spotted in a distant gas cloud.
Just in time for Halloween, the new image shows a "striking shadow" in the Serpens nebula, located about 1,300 light-years away from Earth, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said in a statement. communicated. Astronomers have dubbed this the shadow of the bat, because it looks a lot like a bat with spread wings.
You can see the two black streaks stretching on either side of a star called HBC 672, which illuminates the surrounding gas cloud (or nebula). Although the wings of the bat look scary, there is a natural explanation: they occur because the CBH 672 is surrounded by a disc of material that could one day turn into planets.
The striking "bathead" of the young star HBC 672 is visible in this Hubble telescope view of part of the Serpens nebula.
Credit: NASA / ESA / StSCi
"By hanging tightly to the star, the disc creates an imposing shadow, much larger than the disc – about 200 times the diameter of our own solar system," wrote officials. ESA. "The shade of the disc is similar to that produced by a cylindrical shade.The light escapes from the top and bottom of the shade, but along its perimeter, dark cones of shaded form. "
Most shadows are jet black, but astronomers are seeing color changes along the edges. This helps the researchers to know more about the size and composition of the dust grains in the disc, added ESA officials. The shaded line is rather striking, but it is precisely the angle that makes it unusual; these shadows are actually very common around young stars.
View of the Serpens nebula from the HAWK-I instrument on the very large telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The filters used here cover similar wavelengths that Hubble can see.
Credit: ESO
"The entire Serpens nebula, which is only a tiny part of this image, could accommodate more shadow projections." The nebula encompasses hundreds of young stars, many of which could also be forming stars. planets in a protoplanetary disk, "added ESA.
If you use your bat view, you can even see another bat-like shadow in the same picture, in the upper left corner. The shadows may not be spooky enough to scare Gotham, but they are clear signals that show what our solar system looked like. Scientists commonly study protoplanetary disks to learn more about the history of our solar system.
Wide view of the Serpens Nebula and its surroundings from the Digitized Sky survey.
Credit: NASA / ESA / Digitized Sky Survey 2 (Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin)
Hubble has already hosted other grim events. Just look at this gallery of nebulae for some examples.
follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
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