A nebula (Latin for "cloud"; pl. nebulae, nebulæ, or nebulas) is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases. Originally, nebula was a name for any diffuse astronomical object, including galaxies beyond the Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy, for instance, was referred to as the Andromeda Nebula (and spiral galaxies in general as "spiral nebulae") before the true nature of galaxies was confirmed in the early 20th century by Vesto Slipher, Edwin Hubble and others.
Most nebulae are of vast size, even hundreds of light years in diameter. Although denser than the space surrounding them, most nebulae are far less dense than any vacuum created in an Earthen environment – a nebular cloud the size of the Earth would have a total mass of only a few kilograms. Nebulae are often star-forming regions, such as in the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. In these regions the formations of gas, dust, and other materials "clump" together to form larger masses, which attract further matter, and eventually will become massive enough to form stars. The remaining materials are then believed to form planets and other planetary system objects.
Nebula is a genus of moth in the family Geometridae.
Nebula, Inc. is a hardware and software company with offices in Mountain View, California, USA and Seattle, Washington, USA. Nebula is the developer of Nebula One, a cloud computing hardware appliance that turns the customer's racks of standard servers into a private cloud. The Nebula One private cloud system is built on the OpenStack open source cloud framework, as well as many other open source software projects.
Nebula was founded as '“Fourth Paradigm Development" in the Spring of 2011 by former NASA Ames Chief Technology Officer Chris C. Kemp, long-time colleague Devin Carlen, and entrepreneur Steve O'Hara.
In May 2011, Nebula closed a round of Series-A investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Highland Capital Partners, with participation from Google's first three investors—Andy Bechtolsheim, Ram Shriram, and David Cheriton, as well as other investors.
Nebula's team includes many of the technical project leads on the OpenStack project. In the summer of 2012, eight key members of the original Anso Labs and NASA team that originally wrote the key components of the OpenStack platform joined Nebula.
The mist crawling through the clouds
Paranoia breach in our minds
Veiled sanity like a shroud
And forced us to resign
And they came from the skies
Shape shifting in our fears
Enslaved the strongest specimens
And the soil was moistened with our tears
Devoured our souls
Its inhabitants crushed our hope
Nebula took the crowd control
The mist crawling through the clouds
Fear became our daily bread
Closing in, suffocating the pride
Until everything but animal was dead
And they came from the skies
Shape shifting in our fears
Enslaved the strongest specimens
And the soil was moistened with our tears
Devoured our souls
Its inhabitants crushed our hope
Nebula took the crowd control
Consumed by their twisted therapy
(And fist upon our soul)
We lost our guts, we lost our path
(And fist upon our soul)
Nailed, shut and chained inside misery
(And fist upon our soul)
We realized we'll never come back
(And fist upon our soul)
Devoured our souls
Its inhabitants crushed our hope
Nebula took the crowd control