Stunning space photo captures bright blue shock wave around double star system
Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical “Skyscapes” that connect both Earth and the night sky.
This image features a deep field view of the Cassiopeia constellation immersed in the glow of ionized hydrogen gas, where the two small planetary nebulas can be found, Abell 6 and the larger HFG1.
Both nebulas are the leftover remnants from the last phase of a medium star like our sun.
HFG1 features a prominent bluish arc-shaped shock wave, known as a bow shock, created as the binary star system V664 Cas speeds through our Milky Way galaxy. Bow shocks are crescent-shaped structures formed by the friction of solar wind coming from a star and the interstellar medium, the space between stars. V664 Cas is a binary system consisting of a white dwarf, a stellar corpse, and a red giant star, only a few million miles apart from each other.
The other small bright bluish ball visible to the left of center in the image is known as Abell 6. This small planetary nebula, like others like it, was formed by gases in the outer layers of a dying star. The nebula we see today is a shell of dust and gas that was ejected from a star as it exhausted its supply of fuel to sustain nuclear fusion in its core.
These kinds of planetary nebulae have a short life span of only about 10,000 years. After that point, they become invisible due to a lack of ultraviolet light emitted by the stars that created them.
This image was captured in HaOIII and RGB light from the Dark Sky Alqueva Observatory in Cumeada, Portugal.
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