Astronomy lovers often flock to Nasa’s social media accounts looking for mind-blowing photographs, visualisations and interesting scientific facts.
This time Nasa has left netizens amazed with the image of the Lagoon Nebula. The serene image showing a fantasy landscape has intrigued Instagram users.
Posted a day ago, the Instagram post has managed to fetch more than 12 lakh likes. “Damn what a beautiful scene ❤️ the universe it’s indeed the most beautiful thing to admire,” commented a user.
The image features a massive star 200 times brighter than the sun. While the stunning image may look like a serene cosmic landscape, the star is full of turbulent gases, as per the space agency’s Instagram post.
The massive star called Herschel 36 is 32 times larger than the sun and its temperature is 40,000 degrees Kelvin. Its diameter is nearly nine times larger than that of the sun. The one million-year-old-star emits powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds. The torrential stellar winds unleashed from the star push dust away in curtain-like sheets, as per the Nasa website.
Before this, a video of Monkey Head Nebula shared by Nasa had gone viral. The Monkey Head Nebula (also known as NGC 2174) is a star-forming region. Bright, newborn stars in the proximity of the nebula’s centre light up surrounding gas with energetic radiation.
