NASA image release May 11, 2010
Hubble Catches Heavyweight Runaway Star Speeding from 30 Doradus
Image: ESO 2.2-m WFI Image of the Tarantula Nebula
A blue-hot star, 90 times more massive than our Sun, is hurtling across space fast enough to make a round trip from Earth to the Moon in merely two hours. Though the speed is not a record-breaker, it is unique to find a homeless star that has traveled so far from its nest. The only way the star could have been ejected from the star cluster where it was born is through a tussle with a rogue star that entered the binary system where the star lived, which ejected the star through a dynamical game of stellar pinball. This is strong circumstantial evidence for stars as massive as 150 times our Sun's mass living in the cluster. Only a very massive star would have the gravitational energy to eject something weighing 90 solar masses. The runaway star is on the outskirts of the 30 Doradus nebula, a raucous stellar breeding ground in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. The finding bolsters evidence that the most massive stars in the local universe reside in 30 Doradus, making it a unique laboratory for studying heavyweight stars. 30 Doradus, also called the Tarantula Nebula, is roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth.
To learn more about this image go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/runaway-star.html
Credit: NASA/ESO, J. Alves (Calar Alto, Spain), and B. Vandame and Y. Beletski (ESO)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
mebius ring, suesviews, nature's machine, Harley Kuyck-Cohen, and 170 other people added this photo to their favorites.
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Ahmad Albattah ~ إحساس الضوء 37 months ago | reply
woooooooooooooooow
Raymond Larose 37 months ago | reply
Love it!!
winston.1 { very busy.} 37 months ago | reply
Just stunning....fabulous.
monicaflick 37 months ago | reply
How spectacular &fascinating...hard to take in the statistics involved!
Dr. Ilia 37 months ago | reply
Excellent shot
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This is a beautiful image!
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~silentRiver~ 37 months ago | reply
beautiful
{ Amy } 37 months ago | reply
Whoa...space is pretty awesome :P
Soleil is me. 37 months ago | reply
Bravo!...:) Greeting from Bangkok.
Your graceful image is the spectacular to see & study about:)
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in the INSPIRE Pool
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puszka 37 months ago | reply
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Aggressive Photographers, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Amit (Sydney) 37 months ago | reply
impressive!
cat stupid 37 months ago | reply
Kudos to your copy writer.
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Angels GE 37 months ago | reply
Hey! Great image friend!! :O
Here's my last one, could you comment it? (or fave, haha!) :D
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cjuel 37 months ago | reply
Amazing what is going on in this vast universe. Incredible image.
H.Tilbe [deleted] 37 months ago | reply
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Magical Beauty, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
dsleeter_2000 37 months ago | reply
Wonderful image. I hope it is OK that I "enhance" NASA photos for artistic effect... www.flickr.com/photos/dsleeter_2000/4625081413/
PaperSt.SoapCo. 36 months ago | reply
This is incredible. So beautiful.
opensourceway 33 months ago | reply
Thanks for sharing this work with the Commons!
We've used it in an illustration for opensource.com
opensource.com/law/10/8/eben-moglen-what-it-takes-keep-de...
∙ мake it ғuиky ∙ 25 months ago | reply
ommerrda O.O
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