Ghosts exist not only in abandoned castles, anomalous zones and in the place of old cemeteries, but also in deep space. Today we will tell you about ten amazing objects of the "black abyss" that outwardly resemble those ghosts that we are used to seeing in horror films. Some of these objects are just similar, while others, such as planetary nebulae, are really close to otherworldly entities, because they are the remnants of a dying star.
Ghost Nebula
The little-studied and even little-known Ghost Nebula was listed in the catalog of reflecting nebulae by the American astronomer Stuart Sharpless. The catalog was published in 1959, and the nebula was designated KaKSH2-136 there. And seven years later, Canadian astronomer Sidney Van den Berg added it to his catalog. Reflecting, or, as they are also called, diffuse, nebulae are clouds of gas and dust illuminated by stars. The main source of optical radiation from such nebulae is starlight scattered by interstellar dust.
The Ghost Nebula is located 1200 light-years from Earth and is located in our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of the Northern Hemisphere of the sky of Cepheus. In photographs, she looks somewhat intimidating, but at the same time bewitching.
Ghost Head
And this ghost is visible only in the sky of the Southern Hemisphere, in the constellation Dorado. True, to be more precise, this is not a whole ghost, but only its "head". The object, which was given this name, was discovered by the English astronomer John Herschel in 1834 during an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. There, for four years, using one of the largest telescopes of that time, he surveyed the sky, discovering, in addition to this nebula, thousands of others. By nature, the Ghost Head is also a reflective, or diffuse, nebula. In scientific catalogs, it is designated as NGC 2080 or ESO 57-EN12. The light from it to the Earth takes 17,000 years. Especially for Halloween 2016, NASA experts have posted on the Web a picture of this nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The object is located within our galaxy.
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Ghost of Merope
The Pleiades are a young open cluster of stars surrounded by the remnants of the interstellar gas and dust cloud from which the cluster formed. It is clearly visible with the naked eye in the constellation Taurus in the form of a compact dipper. In Russia, the cluster was called Stozhary.
This star cluster is home to its own "cosmic ghost", which is the remnant of the gas cloud from which the stars of the cluster were born. It bears the designation 1C 349. The Ghost Nebula of Merope lies 440 light years from Earth. It was discovered by the American astronomer Edward Barnard at the beginning of the 20th century. The star Merope, which is surrounded by this nebula, is a blue-white supergiant, which in mass and size exceeds our Sun by almost five times. The star is named in honor of a character in ancient Greek mythology - one of the Pleiades, the daughter of Atlanta and Pleione. This object is very popular with amateur astronomers, so many photographs of it can be found on the Internet.
Little Ghost
At the end of their evolution, stars explode into a bright supernova, leaving behind a compact nebula surrounding the remnant, a white dwarf. Such objects are called planetary nebulae - for their external similarity in angular size and color with planets when observed with small telescopes. In the world of stars, they resemble ghosts by their fate. The first in this series is the Little Ghost Nebula, cataloged as NGC 6369. It lies about 3,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus. It was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel. It has a magnitude of 11.5 tons, which makes it possible to find it even with an amateur telescope, if you know where to point it.
Ghost of jupiter
Planetary nebula NGC 3242 of the constellation Hydra is named after the giant planet Jupiter, as its angular size and appearance are very similar when viewed through a telescope at this planet. But if Jupiter is bright and colorful in a telescope, then his ghost is just a faint foggy speck, albeit the brightest in its brilliance among other ghosts. The most modest telescope is enough to see it.
This nebula is located at a distance of 1400 light years from Earth. It spans about two light-years from end to end and contains a white dwarf at its center. The inner layers of the nebula were formed about 1500 years ago, but the explosion of the star that formed this nebula has not been documented in the chronicles.
Ghost of saturn
The second largest planet in the solar system, which has a very beautiful ring system, also has its own ghost. As with the Ghost of Jupiter, it is a planetary nebula. It is designated NGC 6886 and is located in the constellation Arrow, about 5,000 light-years from Earth. It was discovered by the English astronomer Ralph Copeland in 1884 and is available even for observations with small telescopes, having a magnitude of 11.5 m. True, to consider it in all its glory, having discovered previously invisible shells, astronomers were able only thanks to the Hubble telescope.
This nebula should not be confused with another, which has its own name Saturn (NGC 7009) and is located in the constellation Aquarius.
Ghost streak
The planetary Ghost Strip Nebula, or NGC 6741, is located in the constellation Eagle, 7,000 light-years away.
Despite the rather high visual brilliance (11t), for some reason it was missed by the famous discoverers of such objects, for example, William Herschel and John Herschel. It was only in 1882 that the American astronomer Edward Pickering first plotted it on star charts.
For astronomers, the object is a real ghost, since they still cannot calculate the exact distance to it. According to some estimates, the light from the nebula to us is about 5,000 light years, according to others - 9,000. The central star of the nebula is also a kind of ghost and is visible only in the largest telescopes in the world!
Mirach's ghost
The Ghost of Mirach object (NGC 404) in Andromeda is similar in name to the nebula 1C 349 (Ghost of Merope) from the Pleiades, but in fact has a completely different nature. This lenticular dwarf galaxy, 10 million light years away, has nothing to do with a star in the Milky Way. Astrophysicists believe that it used to be a normal spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way or the Andromeda nebula, but about a billion years ago it collided with other galaxies, as a result of which we now see only what remains after the disaster. This ghostly galaxy was discovered by William Herschel in 1784. Despite its high brightness (10m), this object is quite difficult to observe due to the fact that the Mirah star floods it with its light.
Galaxy Ghost
The Ghost dwarf galaxy is located in the southern constellation of Chameleon and is known as NGC 2915. It is located on the outskirts of the local group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda nebula, but, most likely, itself is not part of this system, but is constantly moving away from it. At the moment, we are separated by a distance of 15 million light years. The dwarf galaxy was discovered by the English astronomer John Herschel during his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope.
This object is watched with pleasure by both amateurs of astronomy and professionals who are trying to solve the mystery of the evolution of this galaxy. True, it is available for observations only in the southern hemisphere of the Earth.
Star Cluster NGC 457
Open star cluster NGC 457 of the constellation Cassiopeia, 8000 light-years distant from Earth and located within the Milky Way, claims to be the object with the largest number of proper names in the universe. As soon as it is not called for its bizarre shape: Owl, Dragonfly, Airplane, Angel … There are more than a dozen names, among which there is a Ghost. The cluster was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel. And this is probably the only object that can be seen with binoculars in the northern hemisphere of the sky. Moreover, at the latitude of Russia, it is visible all year round.
Yuri SOLOMONOV