This may sound unbelievable, but this is the coldest place in the universe. Meet the Boomerang Nebula – a young example of what astronomers call a planetary nebula, although it has nothing to do with planets. This object is located some 5,000 light-years away. It once was a star much like our sun, but now it’s near the end of its life, and it has sloughed off its outer layers. Astronomers say the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known object in the universe. They’ve learned that its temperature is one degree Kelvin (minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s even colder than the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, which is the natural background temperature of space: colder than space itself. Astronomers announced (October 24, 2013) that they have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile to take a new look at this object. The image below is the result of those new observations. With these observations, astronomers also have a better understanding of the shape of the Boomerang Nebula, which previously was thought to be reminiscent of a bow-tie. BUT ITS AN AMOGUS
AMOGUS
