Multimedia Gallery
Hourglass-shaped Nebula Sharpless 2-106
An optical image of the hourglass-shaped nebula Sharpless 2-106 (Sh2-106), taken using the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Sh2-106, an hourglass-shaped (bipolar) nebula, is a stellar nursery made up of glowing gas and light-scattering dust. The material shrouds a natal, high-mass star thought to be mostly responsible for the hourglass shape of the nebula due to high-speed winds (more than 200 kilometers per second), that eject material from deep within the forming star.
To learn more about this discovery, see the Gemini news story "The Many Colors of Star Birth." (Date of Image: 2009)
Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA
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