What Are Nebulae?
Many big white and black spots can be seen through a telescope, when we look at the sky at night. These black and white spots are called nebulae, the meaning of nebulae is mist and it comes from Latin origin. In reality nebulae gives us the look of mist. Black spots are known as ‘black nebulae’ while the white spots are known as ‘bright nebulae’. In fact these nebulae consist of gas, dust and group of stars. Several nebulae are located in our Milky Way, however other are outside it.
We have obtained a lot of information about nebulae with powerful telescopes. There are about 2000 nebulae are in our Milky Way. It is expected that millions of nebulae are existing outside the Milky Way. The nebulae are of different shapes, some of them are of elliptical, some are of spiral shaped and others do not have regular shape. The temperature of nebulae varies from 6000 degrees C to 12000 degrees C. The temperature of black nebulae is much less as compare to bright nebulae. Due to this reason, they look black. Mostly they contain helium and hydrogen gases. The nebula which is situated in Milky Way is about 300 light years away from the earth. Whereas those located outside the Milky Way are 150, 000 light years away from the earth. Some of the nebulae have been photographed by the scientists. The crab nebula is 600 light years away from us as indicated by its photograph. One of the nebulae looks like the head of a horse in the photograph and we called it as ‘Horse’ nebulae. Another looks like a ring and we called it ‘Ring’ nebulae. Many nebulae have already been studied by the scientists.
