Top of The Cone Nebula Up Close in Monoceros | Hubble

Top of The Cone Nebula Up Close in Monoceros | Hubble

Top section of the giant-sized Cone Nebula

Ground-based image of the Cone Nebula with a regional outline of the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) close-up view. The Anglo-Australian Observatory, now known as the Australian Astronomical Observatory, is a 3.9-meter telescope located at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.

Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial object is actually a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (NGC 2264)—so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape—this monstrous pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture, taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, shows the top part of the Cone. It has a full height equal to 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long.

Distance: 2,500 light years in the constellation Monoceros

Radiation from hot, young stars has slowly eroded the nebula over millions of years. Ultraviolet light heats the edges of the dark cloud, releasing gas into the relatively empty region of surrounding space. There, additional ultraviolet radiation causes the hydrogen gas to glow. This produces the red halo of light seen around the pillar. A similar process occurs on a much smaller scale to gas surrounding a single star, forming the bow-shaped arc seen near the upper left side of the Cone. This arc, seen previously with the Hubble telescope, is 65 times larger than the diameter of our Solar System. The blue-white light from surrounding stars is reflected by dust. Background stars can be seen peeking through the evaporating tendrils of gas, while the turbulent base is pockmarked with stars reddened by dust.

Over time, only the densest regions of the Cone will be left. However, inside these regions, stars and planets may form. The Cone Nebula resides 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros within our Milky Way galaxy.

Pillars like the Cone nebula are common in large regions of star birth. Astronomers regard these pillars as incubators for developing stars.

Image Credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team (H. Ford, G. Illingworth, M. Clampin, G. Hartig, T. Allen, K. Anderson, F. Bartko, N. Benitez, J. Blakeslee, R. Bouwens, T. Broadhurst, R. Brown, C. Burrows, D. Campbell, E. Cheng, N. Cross, P. Feldman, M. Franx, D. Golimowski, C. Gronwall, R. Kimble, J. Krist, M. Lesser, D. Magee, A. Martel, W.
 J. McCann, G. Meurer, G. Miley, M. Postman, P. Rosati, M. Sirianni, W. Sparks, P. Sullivan, H. Tran, Z. Tsvetanov, R. White, and R. Woodruff) and ESA
Text Credit: NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and European Space Agency
Release Date: April 30, 2002

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