'Cosmic colours for Holi': European Space Agency marks festival with nebula pics
1 min read . Updated: 08 Mar 2023, 08:50 PM IST
PremiumBright images of a celestial cloudscape and a portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 were posted on Instagram by the space agency
The European Space Agency joined Holi festivities this year with a ‘cosmic’ splash of colours. The ESA shared beautiful visuals taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday morning as thousands marked the 'festival of colors'.
Bright images of a celestial cloudscape and a portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 were posted on Instagram by the space agency.
"Cosmic colours for your Holi and Purim parties. We are celebrating the Hindu festival of colours and the Jewish feast of lots with these colourful Hubble captures of two nebulae," wrote the European Space Agency in the post's caption.
The post has since received over 18,000 likes and numerous comments.
According to the ESA, the bright region surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH 505 can be seen in the first two photographs of the celestial cloudscape. Stellar winds or jets of gas ejected by newborn stars collide with nearby gas and dust at high speeds to produce Herbig-Haro objects, which are bright regions around newborn stars.
"In the case of HH 505, these outflows originate from the star IX Ori, which lies on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula around 1000 light-years from Earth," the agency explained.
The space agency stated in reference to the subsequent set of images that "NGC 6530 is a collection of several thousand stars lying around 4350 light-years from Earth".
They said, "A portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars in this image. NGC 6530 is a collection of several thousand stars lying around 4350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The cluster is set within the larger Lagoon Nebula, a giagantic interstellar cloud of gas and dust. It is the nebula that gives this image its distinctly smokey appearance."
