Astronomy Final Project

Observatory / Course Archives / ASTR 110 Fall 2019 / Hulst

Thor's Helmet Nebula

Thor's Helmet is a nebulae that is 30 light years in size. It lies at distance of 11,960 light years from Earth. It is named Thor's Helmet because of its bubble shape and the filaments that resemble the depictions of the Norse god's helmet. It is in the Canis Major constellation, and its interaction with another nearby molecular cloud have contributed to the shape of a curved bow-shock structure.

Thor's Helmet is made of cosmic dust and gas. It has a blue-green appearance through astrophotography. The picture displays blue, green, and red colors. It has a bubble shape, which helps it look like a helmet. Thor's helmet is powered by a "Wolf-Rayet" star. This star is massive and is about 10 to 80 times the mass of our Sun. When the star enters this phase the fast wind sweeps up the matter that was left behind and blows a bubble. It then becomes 200,000 times more luminous than the Sun. This then gives the nebula ultraviolet light that leads to bright emission in visible light.

Sombrero Galaxy

The Sombreo galaxy is almost completely tilted on edge. It was given its name because it looks like a
Mexican hat because of its broad rim and high top. It is located at the Southern tip of the Virgo cluster and is one of the biggest objects in this group. It is equal to 800 billion suns. Also, it is 50,000 light-years across in diameter and is 28 million light-years from Earth. The Sombrero galaxy has a bright nucleus and a larger than average central bulge, along with a prominent dust lane in its disk. It is also classified as being an unbarred spiral galaxy. One of the most intersting facts about the Sombreo galaxy is that it has a massive black hole in its center. It is thought to have the largest black hole ever to be found at the heart of a galaxy.

The Sombrero galaxy has points of light that are globular clusters in its central bulge. The dust rings have many young and bright stars within it. The dust lanes make up the brim of the galaxy. The bright white crown is made up of old stars that form a central bulge. The flat disk blocks out light from the Sombrero, which makes it look like a shadow aganist the bright bulge of stars.

Ari System

The 30 Ari System is 130 light years away. It is made of mostly F-type main-sequence stars. This means that the stars are fusing hydrogen in their cores. It is also 910 million years old, so it is one fifth of the age of the Sun. The temperature of 30 Ari System is around 6462 K. The 30 Ari B planet is comparable in size to Jupiter. The Ari B system is only the second planet to be identified in a quadruple star system. An interesting fact about the 30 Ari system is that it has 10 times the mass of Jupiter and it orbits its primary star every 335 days.

This picture shows four stars and one planet. The planet orbits the primary star, which is yellow, in about one year. The yellow primary star also has a companion, 30 Ari B. 30 Ari B is a small red dwarf star and is located in the upper left of the picture. These two stars are in a long-distance orbit with 30 Ari A, which is located in the upper right corner. The two brightest components, 30 Ari A and B have V magnitudes of 6.48 and 7.09, and a separation of about 38 arc seconds. 30 Ari A is known as a single-line spectroscopic binary with a period of 11.1 days. It is hard to determine 30 Ari A's properties, but it is estimated that this star is a dim red dwarf.