NASA Telescopes Watch ‘Flame-Throwing Guitar’ Rock Out In Space

ABC News

A pair of NASA space telescopes teamed up to capture a nebula that looks like a flame-throwing guitar in space.
The Guitar Nebula earned its name thanks to its resemblance to the stringed instrument popular with rockers.
Both space telescopes have decades of experience in documenting the cosmos.
The Guitar Nebula has been doing some eye-catching shredding over the last couple decades.
Space telescopes with different specialties often team up to give us a more complete picture of a cosmic object.

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Prepare yourself to be smashed in the name of science. A nebula that resembles a flame-throwing guitar was captured in space by two NASA space telescopes working together. Because of its similarity to the stringed instrument that is popular among rock musicians, the Guitar Nebula got its name. The Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory data demonstrate the celestial instrument lookalike exploding particles from a collapsed star.

When it comes to recording the universe, both space telescopes have decades of experience. While Chandra launched in 1999, Hubble launched in 1990. This allows astronomers to monitor changes over time. Throughout the past few decades, the Guitar Nebula has been producing some visually striking shredding.

Chandra’s ability to see activity close to the guitar’s top is demonstrated in a NASA video.

Overall, the guitar’s shape is subtle, but you can see that the pointy “headstock,” which is where the tuners would be on a real guitar, is located upward from the round body. NASA said in a statement on November that the Chandra X-rays revealed a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles that was about two light-years or 12 trillion miles long and that was blasting away from the pulsar (visible as the bright white . attached to the filament). 19. The Chandra observations used in the NASA video span the years 2000–2021.

The Guitar Nebula’s associated pulsar is known as PSR B2224+65. A neutron star that rotates and emits regular radiation pulses is called a pulsar. It’s like a lighthouse beacon, according to NASA. NASA stated that the guitar-like shape was caused by bubbles that were blown by particles that were expelled from the pulsar by a constant wind. The pulsar’s activity is captured by Chandra’s ability to “see” X-rays, allowing us to see the guitar hurling “flames.”. Have a rock star conversation.

Various specialized space telescopes frequently collaborate to provide us with a more comprehensive view of a celestial object. Researchers’ comprehension of the nebula was aided by optical observations provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble can record light wavelengths that are visible to the human eye. That capability is expanded into the deep cosmos by its potent optics system.

The “Lawn Sprinkler Gone Berserk” is captured by the ForbesHubble Telescope.

Hubble observations from 1994 to 2021 reveal motion in the guitar’s “headstock” and pulsar. According to NASA, “a study of this data has concluded that the variations that drive the formation of bubbles in the hydrogen nebula, which forms the outline of the guitar, also control changes in how many particles escape to the right of the pulsar, causing subtle brightening and fading of the X-ray filament, like a cosmic blow torch shooting from the tip of the guitar.”. Astronomers are learning more about the interactions between pulsars and the interstellar medium thanks to Chandra and Hubble’s observations.

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