A disc in the Ant Nebula

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, astronomers have uncovered a disc in the heart of the Ant Nebula. The disc seems, however, too 'skinny' to explain how the nebula got its intriguing ant-like shape. The image on the right shows a previously taken image of the Ant Nebula, in the mid-infrared, with the VLT Imager and Spectrometer for the mid-InfraRed (VISIR). The image on the left shows a model of the dusty disc the astronomers uncovered with the MID-infrared Interferometric instrument (MIDI), which combined the light from two 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescopes. The lower part of the image representing the southern lobe is brighter, for this lobe is closer to our line-of-sight. The major axis of the flat, nearly edge-on disc is perpendicular to the axis of the bipolar lobes of the nebula. The disc extends from about 9 times the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun (9 Astronomical Units or 9 AU) to more than 500 AU.

Credit:

ESO

About the Image

Id:eso0742a
Type:Observation
Release date:27 September 2007
Related releases:eso0742
Size:2141 x 1196 px

About the Object

Name:Ant Nebula
Type:Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Planetary
Distance:8000 light years
Category:Nebulae

Image Formats

Large JPEG
179.2 KB
Screensize JPEG
65.0 KB

Wallpapers

1024x768
101.1 KB
1280x1024
136.0 KB
1600x1200
177.7 KB
1920x1200
184.1 KB
2048x1536
248.2 KB

Colours & filters

BandWavelengthTelescope
Infrared
Mid-IR
12 μmVery Large Telescope
VISIR

Notes: VISIR data relates to the right image. The left image is a model of the inner disk which was observed using MIDI.