Celestial 'Snow Angel': Star-forming Region Sharpless 2-106 in Cygnus | STScI
The star-forming region Sharpless 2-106 (S106) has a bi-polar shape that has been described as a "celestial snow angel". The "wings" of the nebula are actually bubbles of hot gas created by stellar winds and high energy radiation coming from a massive, hot, newborn star in the center. A ring of dense gas and dust encircles that star and forces the outflows into two oppositely directed lobes. The blue light in the S106 image represents hotter gas along the interior of the lobes, while the red light comes from cooler gas along the exterior.
This video presents a scientific visualization of S106 in which the Hubble image has been augmented with additional field-of-view from the Subaru Infrared Telescope. A couple research articles in science journals described the basic hourglass-like shape of the nebula. Based on those papers, and augmented by intuition and artistic license as needed, the stars and the lobes of glowing gas from the Hubble/Subaru two-dimensional image have been separated and sculpted to create the depth in the movie. This three-dimensional view illustrates and emphasizes that many of the objects contained within astronomical images are not at the same distance, but, in fact, spread across many light-years of space. Note, however, that the relative distances between stars and the nebula have been compressed.
Sh 2-106 is an emission nebula and a star formation region in the constellation Cygnus. It is a H II region estimated to be around 2,000 light years (600 parsecs) from Earth, in an isolated area of the Milky Way.
In the center of the nebula is a young and massive star that emits jets of hot gas from its poles, forming the bipolar structure. Dust that surrounds the star is also ionized by it. The nebula spans about 2 light-years across.
Duration: 1 minute
Release Date: Nov. 12, 2025
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