Astronomy 101: Nebulae
In this episode, learn what astronomers have come to know about some of the most beautiful objects in the night sky — the various collections of gas and dust that permeate our universe.
 Emission nebula NGC 604
Photo by HST/NASA/ESA A “nebula,” the Latin word for cloud, is basically a collection of dust and gas in space. Odds are, if you’re looking at some transfixing bit of astrophotography, the subject will either be a galaxy or a nebula. Originally, astronomers thought they were one and the same and thought of objects like the Andromeda Galaxy as a spiral nebula within our galaxy. Once they learned our Milky Way was not the entire universe, however, they began distinguishing between the two. |
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