Astrophysicist / Space Data Scientist | Cybersecurity Expert | AI/ML Expert | Veteran | Views are My Own
Look at this cool space picture! Isn't it pretty? It shows a faint glowing cloud called IC 410, taken with a telescope and special filters in the Netherlands. In the middle and to the right, you can see two interesting things in the cloud, called the tadpoles of IC 410. They're like shapes in a pond of gas and dust in space. The tadpoles are about 10 light-years long and made of denser, cooler gas and dust. They're probably where new Suns are being born. These tadpoles were formed in the cloudy space about 4 million years ago. The bright and hot stars in a group called NGC 1893, found inside the nebula, are making the gas around them glow. The tadpoles look like they have heads and tails. The heads are outlined by bright ridges of gas, and the tails stretch away from the young stars in the middle of the group. IC 410 and NGC 1893 are really far away, about 10,000 light-years, in a part of the sky called Auriga, which has a lot of nebulas. (A light-year is a measure of distance in space, showing how far light travels in one year. Since light moves really fast, about 186,282 miles per second, using light-years helps us describe vast distances in a simpler way, like saying how far stars or galaxies are from us.) NGC 1893 and the Tadpoles of IC 410 Image Credit & Copyright: Sander de Jong #SpaceExploration #NebulaDiscovery #AstronomyWonder #Stargazing #CosmicWonders #AstroPhotography #TadpolesOfIC410 #GalacticBeauty #StarFormation #AurigaNebula
