File:Omega Nebula.jpg

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The photograph, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.

The wave-like patterns of gas have been sculpted and illuminated by a torrent of ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars, which lie outside the picture to the upper left. The glow of these patterns accentuates the three-dimensional structure of the gases. The ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds. The warmed surfaces glow orange and red in this photograph. The intense heat and pressure cause some material to stream away from those surfaces, creating the glowing veil of even hotter greenish gas that masks background structures. The pressure on the tips of the waves may trigger new star formation within them.

The image, roughly 3 light-years across, was taken May 29-30, 1999, with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The colors in the image represent various gases. Red represents sulfur; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.
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Author NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)
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Public domain This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use.
The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag.

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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current09:33, 1 March 2010Thumbnail for version as of 09:33, 1 March 20102,163 × 1,756 (1 MB)Tryphon (talk | contribs)Better quality, from http://spacetelescope.org/images/large/heic0305a.jpg.
21:33, 7 April 2006Thumbnail for version as of 21:33, 7 April 20062,163 × 1,756 (276 KB)YolanC (talk | contribs);description: Omega Nebula, also known as M17 ;source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2003/13/image/a ;copyright: domain public (NASA & STScl: http://hubblesite.org/copyright/) {{PD-USGov-NASA}} Category:Emission nebulae

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