bipolar nebula
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bipolar nebula
A small emission or reflection nebula that appears hourglass-shaped and that represents outflow of gas in opposite directions from a central star that is often obscured by dust. Many have been detected as infrared or radio sources. A bipolar nebula can occur at two very different stages of a star's evolution. It can represent the early stages of a star's life, when it is the visible sign of the bipolar outflow of T Tauri wind from a young star. It can also result from the directional loss of matter from an evolved giant star as it begins to eject mass to become a planetary nebula.Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006
bipolar nebula
[bī‚pōl·ər ′neb·yə·lə] (astronomy)
A nebula consisting of two relatively symmetrical bright lobes with a star between them.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
References in periodicals archive
It gets its moniker from a Hubble Space Telescope image that reveals it as a
bipolar nebula with a very vague resemblance to a footprint.
The odd little
bipolar nebula Sharpless 2-106 in Cygnus is a challenge object even for visual observers with 16-inch telescopes under dark skies.
If that's the case, what would a
bipolar nebula look like if turned sideways?
That eruption produced the
bipolar nebula famous from Hubble Space Telescope images (opposite).
These reveal a classic
bipolar nebula in which the bright gas clearly forms two distinct lobes straddling the star rather than one continuous feature wrapped around it.
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