Print yourself a 3-D Model of a Nebula-Thanks to NASA!

Well for Astrophysicists and Astronomers its quite a disappointment that they cannot get hold of the things that they discover.But now things have changed and like Zoologists and Geologists Astronomers can also get a glimpse at what they are creating and can actually hold them.Thanks to Astrophysicist Wolfgang Steffen from National Autonomous University of Mexico who with the help of NASA created a 3-D printed model of  Homunculus Nebula.He used a software called"Shape" to make this possible.

This giant cloud of light, gas and dust was discovered in the mid 1800 when binary star system called Eta Carinae located about 7500 light years away erupted.Due to its eruption it had spewed a massive amount of solar material into the universe due to which it was ranked as the 2nd most brightest start at that time.In this System one of the star hold up-to to 90 suns and can produce as much as 5 million times more energy as compared to sun while the other generally the smaller one in size could be 30 times the mass of our sun and can be million times brighter..Through the help of X-Shooter Spectrography the astronomers had to experiment around 92 slices of the system whereas before this experiment the researcher had an idea about of 5 slices only.So this was a big achievement for them.

The experiment were carried forward to find the answer of a question that whether Homunculus contain any imprint of the stars binary nature.Since previous report suggest that both the lobes were identical and symmetrical along their longer axis.But new studies shows that the collision between Eta Carinae's stars helps to mold Homunculus. It also shown that that the holes located at the end of each lobes and the absence of any molecular hydrogen emission from dust skirt visible at light near the center of the nebula.So researchers were able to prove that if the two stars of  Eta Carinae are collided then they do will have an effect of formation of the Nebula in which they are contained.

The experiment was an exciting thing not only for the scientist and astronomers but to the normal public and students as well - provided that they have a 3-D printer.Well let me tell you if you are a owner of a 3D printer then you can hold the homunculus by printing out the high resolution 3D model of the cloud-gas formation and you can also watch the collision happening and what after the collision? in front of your own eyes.All you need to do is  follow the steps given by NASA .Follow the link to download the zip file.
 http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011500/a011568/Eta_Car_Homunuculus_3D_model.zip

                                                                                                                               Anuttam Chatterjee