the.com/nebula
a cosmic nursery where dying stars donate the dust that becomes new ones
means A vast interstellar cloud of gas and dust, often glowing or dark, where stars are born and where dying stars scatter their material.
from Straight from Latin nebula, meaning 'mist, fog, cloud' — a word for the haze you couldn't quite see through. It's likely related to Greek nephele, also 'cloud,' and shares deep roots with the same family that gave us 'nebulous' for anything vague. Astronomers borrowed it for the faint, fuzzy smudges in the night sky long before telescopes revealed many of them to be distant galaxies or true clouds of cosmic dust.
- star factory
- Gravity collapses their gas into brand-new stars
- recycled death
- Many form from exploded stars seeding heavy elements
- thinner than air
- Less dense than the best lab vacuum on Earth
- light-years wide
- The Orion Nebula spans about 24 light-years
- named for fog
- Nebula is Latin for cloud or mist
orion nebula — visible to naked eye in orion constellation, approximately 1,344 light-years from earth
crab nebula — remnant of supernova observed by chinese astronomers in 1054 ce
horsehead nebula — dark nebula in orion, discovered in 1888 by williamina fleming
ring nebula — planetary nebula in lyra constellation, approximately 2,000 light-years away