{"id":26379,"date":"2025-01-31T05:56:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T05:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=26379"},"modified":"2025-01-31T05:56:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T05:56:22","slug":"the-variable-nebula-ngc-2261","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=26379","title":{"rendered":"The Variable Nebula NGC 2261"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img src='https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/image\/2501\/HubblesVariablecopy1024.jpg' style='max-width:600px;' \/><\/p>\n<div>The interstellar cloud of dust and gas captured in this sharp telescopic snapshot is seen to change its appearance noticeably over periods as short as a few weeks. Discovered over 200 years ago and cataloged as NGC 2261, bright star R Monocerotis lies at the tip of the fan-shaped nebula. About one light-year across and 2500 light-years away,  NGC 2261 was studied early last century by astronomer Edwin Hubble and the mysterious cosmic cloud is now more famous as Hubble&#8217;s Variable Nebula. So what makes Hubble&#8217;s nebula vary? NGC 2261 is composed of a dusty reflection nebula fanning out from the star R Monocerotis. The leading variability explanation holds that dense knots of obscuring dust pass close to R Mon and cast moving shadows across the dust clouds in the rest of Hubble&#8217;s Variable Nebula. via NASA <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap250131.html\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The interstellar cloud of dust and gas captured in this sharp telescopic snapshot is seen to change its appearance noticeably over periods as short as a few weeks. Discovered over <a href=\"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=26379\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10,12],"class_list":["entry","author-admin","post-26379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-whatsup","tag-ifttt","tag-nasa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26380,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26379\/revisions\/26380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}