CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA
This stunning image of the so-called “Hand of God” is generating excitement among astronomers, but also across the Internet. An impressive hand-shaped cloud appears to be approaching a galaxy deep in space.
Are you in a hurry? Blue News sums it up for you
- A photo from space is causing a stir among astronomers and on the Internet.
- The image shows the CG4 cloud, often called the “Hand of God,” appearing to reach into a galaxy.
- CG4 is located 1,300 light-years away from us.
More than a thousand light-years away from Earth, a ghostly hand reaches out toward a galaxy. The stunning cloud called CG4, but more commonly called the Hand of God, and its red glow have been captured in a new image.
The photo caused a sensation among space enthusiasts, but also across the Internet.
The red glow of ionized hydrogen at the center and around the outer edge was captured using a special filter, according to the team at the NSF NOIRLab astronomical research center in Tucson, US. Light is produced when hydrogen is bombarded and stirred by the radiation of nearby massive stars.
“CG4” belongs to what are called cometary globules, which are numerous in our Milky Way Galaxy. They are clouds of interstellar dust and gas that look like a comet thanks to a kind of tail and in which new stars can form.
According to the researchers, the “Hand of God” also contains enough gas to allow the formation of several new stars the size of the sun.
9.46 trillion kilometers
CG4 is located 1,300 light-years away from us, and its tail is about eight light-years long, which is very small for a gas cloud. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, or 9.46 trillion kilometers.
Like most other cometary globules observed so far, CG4 is located within a huge cluster of glowing gas, called the Gum Nebula. Astronomers believe they are the remains of a supernova that occurred about a million years ago.
There is another famous “Hand of God”.
From the ground, the hull is visible on the aft deck of the ship (in Latin “dog”), a constellation in the southern sky. The spiral galaxy that “CG4” appears to reach is called “ESO 257-19,” and it is in fact more than a hundred million light-years away from the alleged hand, as astronomers explain.
In football history, the “Hand of God” refers to a situation that occurred during the 1986 World Cup, when the captain of the Argentine national team… Diego Maradona He scored a goal – an irregular one – with his hand.
The expression was coined by the player himself, who said that the ball entered the goal “partly with Maradona’s head and partly with God’s hand.”
Sarah Matashi
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