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Friday, October 12, 2012

Central nebulae in the Milky Way


The research instrument worlds most powerful recorded this fabulous view of the sky in one shot. The scene, looking near Sagittarius, covers an area of ​​approximately 3 degrees of curve or six times the diameter of the lunar disk.

The Lagoon Nebula (M8), Trifid Nebula (M20) and NGC 6559 (pictured at right) are, respectively, in the bottom of the scene, top right and bottom left. All of them are embedded in dusty fields and filled with stars of the Milky Way center.


The color scheme used shows starlight reddened by dust in red, while the emission of hydrogen atoms, usually red, is shown in green.

Regarding the observation instrument, it was built and is operated by the Project Pan-STARRS. It consists of a telescope and a digital camera of 1.4 gigapixels (gigapixel equals one billion pixels).

Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope English and Rapid Response System, which could be translated as panoramic survey telescope and rapid response system) explore the universe with a very high resolution, combined with a very wide field of view.

The project's objective is to observe the sky for comets and asteroids potentially hazardous to Earth.

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