# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DCnBSunpsRt
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/24995796-nasa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/d8754fa694.jpg
- **Posted:** 2024-11-20T22:19:10.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

Put down the air guitar, pick up the space guitar 🎸🔥⁣
 ⁣
A flame-throwing nebula shreds its way across the universe in this video from our NASAChandraXray and NASAHubble telescopes. Astronomers nicknamed this structure the Guitar Nebula because of the guitar-shaped bubbles streaming out from the pulsar in the lower left. (Don’t see the guitar? Swipe through for a hint.)⁣
 ⁣
Meanwhile, X-rays seen by Chandra (displayed here in red) show a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles blasting away from the pulsar; this red line is about two light-years (12 trillion miles or 18 trillion km) long. This rapidly-rotating, fast-moving star has a very strong magnetic field, which helps create the strange shapes shown in this video.⁣
 ⁣
Video description: A six-second multiwavelength timelapse video of the Guitar Nebula. The guitar shape appears at the lower left, with the neck of the instrument pointing towards the upper left. The guitar shape is ghostly and translucent, resembling a wispy cloud on a dark night. At the end of the neck, the guitar’s head comes to a sharp point that lands on a bright, white dot. This dot is a pulsar, and the guitar shape is a hydrogen nebula.⁣
 ⁣
The pulsar has also released an energetic X-ray blast that extends from the bright white dot all the way out to the upper righthand corner of the frame. It appears as a streak of red dots, most of which fall in a straight, densely packed line.⁣
 ⁣
Image description: A composite image, similar to the video, where the shape of the guitar is traced by a thin white line.⁣
 ⁣
Credit: (X-ray) NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical full field: Palomar Obs./Caltech & inset: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare)⁣
 ⁣
#NASA #Space #Guitar #Nebula #Animation #Astronomy #Hubble #Chandra

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 360,751
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 873

## Tags

animation, nasa, hubble, space, nebula, chandra, guitar, astronomy

---
Copyright (c) Gondola