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This false-color image shows the chilliest region in the universe, as imaged in the Boomerang Nebula with the NTT/ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile through a V-band filter. The farther away you look from the central star, which is depicted here as a white square, the colder the temperature. The Boomerang contains gas and dust ejected by a Sun-like star in its death throes, and is seen here in starlight reflected by the dust particles. The image is displayed on a log scale and color-coded. Blue represents the faintest regions, with yellow, red and white representing increasingly brighter regions. The bipolar lobes, seen representing the coldest regions, contain gas ejected from the central star and expanding at 590,000 kilometers per hour (370,000 miles per hour). This expansion cools the gas to below 3 Kelvin, or minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit, which is lower than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation that pervades our universe. This allows carbon monoxide molecules in the nebular gas to absorb that background radiation. The absorption signal was detected using the 15-meter (49-foot) Swedish-ESO-Submilli meter Telescope at the European Space Observatory in La Silla, Chile. #####
Description
This false-color image shows the chilliest region in the universe, as imaged in the Boomerang Nebula with the NTT/ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile through a V-band filter. The farther away you look from the central star, which is depicted here as a white square, the colder the temperature. The Boomerang contains gas and dust ejected by a Sun-like star in its death throes, and is seen here in starlight reflected by the dust particles. The image is displayed on a log scale and color-coded. Blue represents the faintest regions, with yellow, red and white representing increasingly brighter regions. The bipolar lobes, seen representing the coldest regions, contain gas ejected from the central star and expanding at 590,000 kilometers per hour (370,000 miles per hour). This expansion cools the gas to below 3 Kelvin, or minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit, which is lower than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation that pervades our universe. This allows carbon monoxide molecules in the nebular gas to absorb that background radiation. The absorption signal was detected using the 15-meter (49-foot) Swedish-ESO-Submilli meter Telescope at the European Space Observatory in La Silla, Chile. #####
Description
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