Hubble Space Christmas Wreath

Hubble Space Christmas Wreath

This festive photograph of the Hubble Space Telescope resembles a Christmas wreath of bright lights. The brilliant star RS Korma (center) is surrounded by a thin cocoon of reflective dust. The object is 10 times more massive than the Sun and 200 times larger.

RS Feed glows rhythmically and dims over a 6-week cycle. This is one of the brightest stars in the class of variable cepheids. Its average intrinsic brightness is 15,000 times the solar indices.

The nebula flickers when pulses of light from cepheids propagate outward. The Hubble Space Telescope received a series of photos of light flashes, capturing the “light echo” phenomenon. Although the light moves through space at high speed, but the nebula is so huge that it is possible to catch the reflected light in the frame. Watching the fluctuation of light in RS Korma and recording weak reflections of light pulses moving through the nebula, astronomers are able to measure light echoes and record the exact distance. The distance to RS Poop is 6500 light years (with an error of 1%).

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