"Red Square"!!!!!, Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news95692359.html

http://www.physorg.com/news95692359.html

Best thing to do first would be to logically-or one side of the nebula to the other (ok, ok: superimpose) to know if it is possible to have a good estimate of how many spokes it has.

Nice pic.

Just some notes: When a quickly spinning star explodes, the expelled dust creates (because of the spin and also the strong magnetic field) a symmetric hourglass/barbell/tubular pattern who's axis is the same as the star's spin. Consider all the barbell nebulas we see out there. I believe we are viewing this from the side of the hourglass, so those spokes are actually the 'wall' of the hourglass.

This post has been edited by fleem on Apr 14 2007, 11:42 AM

To me it looks like it has exploded outwards in the "east and west" direction of spin and also sent out magnetically propelled jets in the "north and south" directions which from four points gives the optical illusion of a square.

And that **is** the problem, Kaneda. An *explosion* of **ordered matter** is the equivalent of a laser beam that emits in more than 3 dimensions and less than 4 dimensions!

What about those 6-spike stars around it? Are those "illusions" too?

Note that the six-spike stars lie roughly in what we (from our point of view) could take as a curved line around the Red Square. We are still waiting for distance info on those... that they seem to lie in the same orbit is where the illusion is.