NASA has a terrible record of telling us anything accurate about our own solar system, as of late, but they get more truthful the further from home they go. For your enjoyment...DT the ET
A Celestial Wreath Of Reflective Dust Illuminated By A Glittering Star
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| This festive NASA Hubble Space Telescope image resembles a holiday
wreath made of sparkling lights. The bright southern hemisphere star RS
Puppis, at the center of the image, is swaddled in a gossamer cocoon of
reflective dust illuminated by the glittering star. Image Credit:
NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-Hubble/Europe Collab.
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image resembles a holiday wreath
made of sparkling lights, NASA says. The bright southern hemisphere star
RS Puppis, at the center of the image, is swaddled in a gossamer cocoon
of reflective dust illuminated by the glittering star. The super star
is ten times more massive than our sun and 200 times larger.
RS Puppis rhythmically brightens and dims over a six-week cycle. It
is one of the most luminous in the class of so-called Cepheid variable
stars. Its average intrinsic brightness is 15,000 times greater than our
sun’s luminosity.
The nebula flickers in brightness as pulses of light from the Cepheid
propagate outwards. Hubble took a series of photos of light flashes
rippling across the nebula in a phenomenon known as a “light echo.” Even
though light travels through space fast enough to span the gap between
Earth and the Moon in a little over a second, the nebula is so large
that reflected light can actually be photographed traversing the nebula.
By observing the fluctuation of light in RS Puppis itself, as well as
recording the faint reflections of light pulses moving across the
nebula, astronomers are able to measure these light echoes and pin down a
very accurate distance. The distance to RS Puppis has been narrowed
down to 6,500 light-years (with a margin of error of only one percent).
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