Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~palla/ANDREAIMMAGINI/Stelle/97-33.txt Дата изменения: Wed Jan 24 20:12:27 2001 Дата индексирования: Sat Dec 22 08:11:17 2007 Кодировка: Поисковые слова: mercury surface

PHOTO CAPTION

EMBARGOED UNTIL: 9:00 A.M. (EDT) WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1997

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC97-33


HUBBLE UNCOVERS BRILLIANT STAR IN MILKY WAY'S CORE


One of the intrinsically brightest stars in our galaxy appears as
the bright white dot in the center of this image taken with
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's Near Infrared Camera
and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) was needed to take the
picture, because the star is hidden at the galactic center,
behind obscuring dust. NICMOS' infrared vision penetrated
the dust to reveal the star, which is glowing with the radiance
of 10 million suns.

The image also shows one of the most massive stellar eruptions
ever seen in space. The radiant star has enough raw power to
blow off two expanding shells (magenta) of gas equal to the mass
of several of our suns. The largest shell is so big (4
light-years) it would stretch nearly all the way from our Sun to
the next nearest star. The outbursts seen by Hubble are
estimated to be only 4,000 and 6,000 years old, respectively.

Despite such a tremendous mass loss, astronomers estimate the
extraordinary star may presently be 100 times more massive than
our Sun, and may have started with as much as 200 solar masses of
material, but it is violently shedding much of its mass.

The star is 25,000 light-years away in the direction of the
constellation Sagittarius. Despite its great distance, the star
would be visible to the naked eye as a modest 4th magnitude object
if it were not for the dust between it and the Earth.

This false-colored image is a composite of two separately
filtered images taken with the NICMOS, on September 13,1997.
The field of view is 4.8 light-years across, at the star's distance
of 25,000 light-years. Resolution is 0.075 arc seconds per pixel
(picture element).

Credit: Don F. Figer (UCLA), and NASA

A photo and caption are available via the World Wide Web at
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/33.html and via links in
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.

Images are available via the World Wide Web at
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/gif/pistol.gif (GIF),
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/jpeg/pistol.jpg (JPEG).

Image files also may be accessed via anonymous ftp from
oposite.stsci.edu in /pubinfo: gif/pistol.gif (GIF) and
jpeg/pistol.jpg (JPEG). Higher resolution digital versions (300
dpi JPEG) of the release photograph are available in
/pubinfo/hrtemp: 97-33.jpg (color) and 97-33bw.jpg (black &
white). A full resolution TIFF image is available in
/pubinfo/tiff/1997/33.tif.