View allAll Photos Tagged PlanetaryNebula
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Edited European Southern Observatory image of the planetary nebula Abell 33.
Original caption: Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have captured this eye-catching image of planetary nebula Abell 33. Created when an aging star blew off its outer layers, this beautiful blue bubble is, by chance, aligned with a foreground star, and bears an uncanny resemblance to a diamond engagement ring. This cosmic gem is unusually symmetric, appearing to be almost perfectly circular on the sky.
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Taken from New Mexico Skies Observatory using an SBIG STL-6303 camera and 51-cm RCOS telescope on a Software Bisque PME 1 Mount
LRGB
LINK
Other images from this series:
1. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51912817758/
2. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51913339650/
3. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51912722131/
4. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51912817498/
5. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51911758022/
6. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51911757837/
NOTE
1. The marked blue star in the geometric centre is the probable source of the nebula.
2. The Soap Bubble Nebula, or PN G75.5+1.7, is a planetary nebula in the constellation Cygnus, near the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). It was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich using an Astro-Physics 160 mm refractor telescope with which he imaged the nebula on June 19, 2007 and on July 6, 2008. The nebula was later independently noted and reported to the International Astronomical Union by Keith B. Quattrocchi and Mel Helm who imaged PN G75.5+1.7 on July 17, 2008. The nebula measures 260″ in angular diameter with a central star that has a J band magnitude of 19.45.
Edited Chandra Space Telescope image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, with colors representing the various metals (to an astronomer, if it's not hydrogen or helium, it's a metal) in the nebula formed from the explosion. Silicon is red, sulfur is yellow, calcium is green, and iron is purple. (Blue is the blast wave.) Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Where do most of the elements essential for life on Earth come from? The answer: inside the furnaces of stars and the explosions that mark the end of some stars' lives.
Astronomers have long studied exploded stars and their remains — known as "supernova remnants" — to better understand exactly how stars produce and then disseminate many of the elements observed on Earth, and in the cosmos at large.
Due to its unique evolutionary status, Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is one of the most intensely studied of these supernova remnants. A new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). Each of these elements produces X-rays within narrow energy ranges, allowing maps of their location to be created. The blast wave from the explosion is seen as the blue outer ring.
X-ray telescopes such as Chandra are important to study supernova remnants and the elements they produce because these events generate extremely high temperatures — millions of degrees — even thousands of years after the explosion. This means that many supernova remnants, including Cas A, glow most strongly at X-ray wavelengths that are undetectable with other types of telescopes.
Chandra's sharp X-ray vision allows astronomers to gather detailed information about the elements that objects like Cas A produce. For example, they are not only able to identify many of the elements that are present, but how much of each are being expelled into interstellar space.
The Chandra data indicate that the supernova that produced Cas A has churned out prodigious amounts of key cosmic ingredients. Cas A has dispersed about 10,000 Earth masses worth of sulfur alone, and about 20,000 Earth masses of silicon. The iron in Cas A has the mass of about 70,000 times that of the Earth, and astronomers detect a whopping one million Earth masses worth of oxygen being ejected into space from Cas A, equivalent to about three times the mass of the Sun. (Even though oxygen is the most abundant element in Cas A, its X-ray emission is spread across a wide range of energies and cannot be isolated in this image, unlike with the other elements that are shown.)
Astronomers have found other elements in Cas A in addition to the ones shown in this new Chandra image. Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and hydrogen have also been detected using various telescopes that observe different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Combined with the detection of oxygen, this means all of the elements needed to make DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information, are found in Cas A.
Oxygen is the most abundant element in the human body (about 65% by mass), calcium helps form and maintain healthy bones and teeth, and iron is a vital part of red blood cells that carry oxygen through the body. All of the oxygen in the Solar System comes from exploding massive stars. About half of the calcium and about 40% of the iron also come from these explosions, with the balance of these elements being supplied by explosions of smaller mass, white dwarf stars.
While the exact date is not confirmed (PDF), many experts think that the stellar explosion that created Cas A occurred around the year 1680 in Earth's timeframe. Astronomers estimate that the doomed star was about five times the mass of the Sun just before it exploded. The star is estimated to have started its life with a mass about 16 times that of the Sun, and lost roughly two-thirds of this mass in a vigorous wind blowing off the star several hundred thousand years before the explosion.
Earlier in its lifetime, the star began fusing hydrogen and helium in its core into heavier elements through the process known as "nucleosynthesis." The energy made by the fusion of heavier and heavier elements balanced the star against the force of gravity. These reactions continued until they formed iron in the core of the star. At this point, further nucleosynthesis would consume rather than produce energy, so gravity then caused the star to implode and form a dense stellar core known as a neutron star.
The exact means by which a massive explosion is produced after the implosion is complicated, and a subject of intense study, but eventually the infalling material outside the neutron star was transformed by further nuclear reactions as it was expelled outward by the supernova explosion.
Chandra has repeatedly observed Cas A since the telescope was launched into space in 1999. The different datasets have revealed new information about the neutron star in Cas A, the details of the explosion, and specifics of how the debris is ejected into space.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Edited European Southern Observatory image of the planetary nebula NGC 6781. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Stars such as our Sun do not contain enough mass to finish their lives in the glorious explosions known as supernovae. However, they are still able to salute their imminent demise into dense, Earth-sized embers called white dwarfs by first expelling colourful shells of gas known as planetary nebulae. This misnomer comes from the similarity in appearance of these spherical mass expulsions to giant planets when seen through small telescopes. NGC 6781 is a nice representative of these cosmic bubbles. The planetary nebula lies a few thousand light-years away towards the constellation of Aquila (the Eagle) and is approximately two light-years across. Within NGC 6781, shells of gas blown off from the faint, but very hot, central star’s surface expand out into space. These shells shine under the harsh ultraviolet radiation from the progenitor star in intricate and beautiful patterns. The central star will steadily cool down and darken, eventually disappearing from view into cosmic oblivion. This image was captured with the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) through three wide band filters (B, V, R) and two narrow-band ones (H-alpha, OIII). EFOSC2 is attached to the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. EFOSC2 has a field of view of 4.1 x 4.1 arcminutes.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the planetary nebula NGC 6326. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The Hubble Space Telescope captured this beautiful image of NGC 6326, a planetary nebula with glowing wisps of outpouring gas that are lit up by a central star nearing the end of its life. When a star ages and the red giant phase of its life comes to an end, it starts to eject layers of gas from its surface leaving behind a hot and compact white dwarf. Sometimes this ejection results in elegantly symmetric patterns of glowing gas, but NGC 6326 is much less structured. This object is located in the constellation of Ara, the Altar, about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Planetary nebulae are one of the main ways in which elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are dispersed into space after their creation in the hearts of stars. Eventually some of this outflung material may form new stars and planets. The vivid red and blue hues in this image come from the material glowing under the action of the fierce ultraviolet radiation from the still hot central star. This picture was created from images taken using the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The red light was captured through a filter letting through the glow from hydrogen gas (F658N). The blue glow comes from ionised oxygen and was recorded through a green filter (F502N). The green layer of the image, which shows the stars well, was taken through a broader yellow filter (F555W). The total exposure times were 1400 s, 360 s and 260 s respectively. The field of view is about 30 arcseconds across.
The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, M 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years. This object was the first planetary nebula to be discovered; by Charles Messier in 1764. At its brightness of visual magnitude 7.5 and its diameter of about 8 arcminutes, it is easily visible in binoculars, and a popular observing target in amateur telescopes. This image taken using a Meade LX-90 12" telescope with a Canon T3i at prime focus.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the planetary nebula (which doesn't look very round here) NGC 5307.
Original caption: This Picture of the Week from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 5307, a planetary nebula which lies about 10000 light years from Earth. It can be seen in the constellation Centaurus (The Centaur), which can be seen primarily in the southern hemisphere. A planetary nebula is the final stage of a Sun-like star. As such, planetary nebulae allow us a glimpse into the future of our own Solar System. A star like our Sun will, at the end of its life, transform into a red giant. Stars are sustained by the nuclear fusion that occurs in their core, which creates energy. The nuclear fusion processes constantly try to rip the star apart. Only the gravity of the star prevents this from happening.
At the end of the red giant phase of a star, these forces become unbalanced. Without enough energy created by fusion, the core of the star collapses in on itself, while the surface layers are ejected outward. After that, all that remains of the star is what we see here: glowing outer layers surrounding a white dwarf star, the remnants of the red giant star’s core.
This isn’t the end of this star’s evolution though — those outer layers are still moving and cooling. In just a few thousand years they will have dissipated, and all that will be left to see is the dimly glowing white dwarf.
Edited European Southern Observatory image of the planetary nebula Abell 33. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have captured this eye-catching image of planetary nebula Abell 33. Created when an aging star blew off its outer layers, this beautiful blue bubble is, by chance, aligned with a foreground star, and bears an uncanny resemblance to a diamond engagement ring. This cosmic gem is unusually symmetric, appearing to be almost perfectly circular on the sky.
Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC
Camera: Hutch modified Canon Rebel XT
Exposure: 30x2 minutes, 25 dark frames
ISO: 1600
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and PHD
Location: Long Island, NY
Processed with MaxDSLR and Photoshop, with Astronomy Tools
NGC6164-65 is a Planetary nebula in the southern constellation Norma, around 4200 light years from us.
When discovered, the two bright outer lobes could not be seen to be connected, so they were separately cataloged. That's why the one object is generally referred to as both NGC6164 and NGC6165.
This image was taken remotely using the MRO 16" f8 RCOS telescope in 2010, using an Apogee Alta U9000 camera and Astrodon Series 1, Red, Green and Blue filters to create a natural colour image.
Editor's note: this is an inset from this gorgeous panel image: www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/8076983365/in/photostream
Check out the "NASA Thinks Pink" Flickr gallery:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157625045060125/
Inset image: Nebula NGC 6826
Main caption: This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat's Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826. In each case, X-ray emission from Chandra is colored purple and optical emission from the Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue.
In the first part of this survey, published in a new paper, twenty one planetary nebulas within about 5000 light years of the Earth have been observed. The paper also includes studies of fourteen other planetary nebulas, within the same distance range, that Chandra had already observed.
A planetary nebula represents a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now. When a star like the sun uses up all of the hydrogen in its core, it expands into a red giant, with a radius that increases by tens to hundreds of times. In this phase, a star sheds most of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that will soon contract to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful, shell-like filamentary structures seen with optical telescopes.
The diffuse X-ray emission seen in about 30% of the planetary nebulas in the new Chandra survey, and all members of the gallery, is caused by shock waves as the fast wind collides with the ejected atmosphere. The new survey data reveal that the optical images of most planetary nebulas with diffuse X-ray emission display compact shells with sharp rims, surrounded by fainter halos. All of these compact shells have observed ages that are less than about 5000 years, which therefore likely represents the timescale for the strong shock waves to occur.
About half of the planetary nebulas in the study show X-ray point sources in the center, and all but one of these point sources show high energy X-rays that may be caused by a companion star, suggesting that a high frequency of central stars responsible for ejecting planetary nebulas have companions. Future studies should help clarify the role of double stars in determining the structure and evolution of planetary nebulas.
These results were published in the August 2012 issue of The Astronomical Journal. The first two authors are Joel Kastner and Rodolfo Montez Jr. of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, accompanied by 23 co-authors.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/pne/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIT/J.Kastner et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Last night's effort.
C9.25 prime focus, f10
ZWO ASI120mm at 50% gain, binned 2x2,
LRGB 20 each x 30s lights, 25 darks. 5 degree C.
AZ-EQ6 unguided
Processed in Nebulosity
Squeezing a little more detail out each time I image M57. Happy considering this is an uncooled camera and no guiding.
Editor's note: this is an inset from this gorgeous panel image: www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/8076983365/in/photostream
Check out the "NASA Thinks Pink" Flickr gallery:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157625045060125/
Inset image: Nebula NGC 7662
Main caption: This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat's Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826. In each case, X-ray emission from Chandra is colored purple and optical emission from the Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue.
In the first part of this survey, published in a new paper, twenty one planetary nebulas within about 5000 light years of the Earth have been observed. The paper also includes studies of fourteen other planetary nebulas, within the same distance range, that Chandra had already observed.
A planetary nebula represents a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now. When a star like the sun uses up all of the hydrogen in its core, it expands into a red giant, with a radius that increases by tens to hundreds of times. In this phase, a star sheds most of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that will soon contract to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful, shell-like filamentary structures seen with optical telescopes.
The diffuse X-ray emission seen in about 30% of the planetary nebulas in the new Chandra survey, and all members of the gallery, is caused by shock waves as the fast wind collides with the ejected atmosphere. The new survey data reveal that the optical images of most planetary nebulas with diffuse X-ray emission display compact shells with sharp rims, surrounded by fainter halos. All of these compact shells have observed ages that are less than about 5000 years, which therefore likely represents the timescale for the strong shock waves to occur.
About half of the planetary nebulas in the study show X-ray point sources in the center, and all but one of these point sources show high energy X-rays that may be caused by a companion star, suggesting that a high frequency of central stars responsible for ejecting planetary nebulas have companions. Future studies should help clarify the role of double stars in determining the structure and evolution of planetary nebulas.
These results were published in the August 2012 issue of The Astronomical Journal. The first two authors are Joel Kastner and Rodolfo Montez Jr. of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, accompanied by 23 co-authors.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/pne/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIT/J.Kastner et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the planetary nebula NGC 6326.
Original caption: The Hubble Space Telescope captured this beautiful image of NGC 6326, a planetary nebula with glowing wisps of outpouring gas that are lit up by a central star nearing the end of its life. When a star ages and the red giant phase of its life comes to an end, it starts to eject layers of gas from its surface leaving behind a hot and compact white dwarf. Sometimes this ejection results in elegantly symmetric patterns of glowing gas, but NGC 6326 is much less structured. This object is located in the constellation of Ara, the Altar, about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Planetary nebulae are one of the main ways in which elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are dispersed into space after their creation in the hearts of stars. Eventually some of this outflung material may form new stars and planets. The vivid red and blue hues in this image come from the material glowing under the action of the fierce ultraviolet radiation from the still hot central star. This picture was created from images taken using the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The red light was captured through a filter letting through the glow from hydrogen gas (F658N). The blue glow comes from ionised oxygen and was recorded through a green filter (F502N). The green layer of the image, which shows the stars well, was taken through a broader yellow filter (F555W). The total exposure times were 1400 s, 360 s and 260 s respectively. The field of view is about 30 arcseconds across.
This image is 57 light frames at 2 minutes a piece and ISO 800, 33 dark frames, 35 flat frames, 46 bias frames. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, and post processing in Photoshop. - See more at: adirondackastro.com/#sthash.WdVadFJr.dpuf
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Helix Nebula.
Original caption: A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.
This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius. Also known by the catalog number NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. These stars spend most of their lives turning hydrogen into helium in massive runaway nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. In fact, this process of fusion provides all the light and heat that we get from our sun. Our sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
When the hydrogen fuel for the fusion reaction runs out, the star turns to helium for a fuel source, burning it into an even heavier mix of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Eventually, the helium will also be exhausted, and the star dies, puffing off its outer gaseous layers and leaving behind the tiny, hot, dense core, called a white dwarf. The white dwarf is about the size of Earth, but has a mass very close to that of the original star; in fact, a teaspoon of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a few elephants!
The glow from planetary nebulae is particularly intriguing as it appears surprisingly similar across a broad swath of the spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared. The Helix remains recognizable at any of these wavelengths, but the combination shown here highlights some subtle differences.
The intense ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf heats up the expelled lay
An irregular Planetary Nebula roughly 2600 light years from us in the southern constellation of Musca.
Taken with an 11" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope pushed to a focal length of 4.8 metres at f20. The 3.2 megapixel camera covers a field of only 10 x 6 arcminutes. Around a third of the width of the full moon across the frame, and the width of nebula, less than half that again...
This RGB composite was created from 4.1 hours of Hydrogen-alpha exposures and 50 minutes each of Red, Green and Blue. 6 hours and 36 minutes in total.
The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as the Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years. (Wikipedia)
This object was the first planetary nebula to be discovered by Charles Messier in 1764. It is a popular target for amateur observation. It is 2.5 light-years across, and is the result of a supernova explosion about 10,000 years ago.
The central star, a white dwarf, is estimated to have a radius which is 0.055 R☉ which gives it a size larger than any other known white dwarf. The central star mass was estimated to be 0.56 M☉. (Wikipedia)
This was a joint project with Ariel. cropped version
Press "L" to view large on black
The Little Dumbbell Nebula (aka the Barbell Nebula and the Cork Nebula) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Perseus.
Looks MUCH better on a dark background in the light box.
Technical info about the image:
Object: The Little Dumbbell Nebula, M 76, NGC 650/651
Sky: LM ~5
Mount: CGEM
Imaging scope: C9.25 at f/6.3
Imaging FL: 1480mm
Imaging camera: SBIG ST-4000XCM
Lights: 90x180s (4.5h)
Calibration: 7 sky flats, 36 darks
Guide scope: Orion 9x50 finder scope
Guide camera: Meade DSI I (2s intervals)
Other details: Images acquired with CCDOPS v5, guided with PHD (using GPUSB), calibrated and stacked using Deep Sky Stacker, post-processed in Photoshop CS5.
----
Looking for a better astronomy planner for iOS? Head over to my profile for a link to Observer Pro.
This image of the globular cluster NGC 1846 was taken by Hubble in 2006, and "remastered" in 2011. If you look straight down from the cluster center, you'll see a tiny green blip: that's the death throes of a star. Details and explanation are in my blog.
blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/22/the-gr...
Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), with P. Goudfrooij (STScI)
Telescope: Newtonian Astrograph FótonAstro 8" F4
Mount: Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 GT
Camera: ZWO ASI2600mm Pro
Filters: V-Pro Series from Antlia
Guide camera: ZWO ASI120mm Mini
NGC 7662 otherwise known as the Blue Snowball Nebula is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Andromeda.
Taken 6/19/2010 from Western Massachusetts.
Telescope: 11" EdgeHD SCT
Camera: Modified Canon Rebel XSi
ISO1600
60 x 15 second exposure (15 minutes)
Processed in Deepsky Stacker and Photoshop
The beautiful planetary nebula in Lyra. The death of a star caused this beautiful nebula.
Taken with my Canon dslr and 150pds telescope.
M27, also known as the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula located 1,360 light years from Earth. The nebula is what is left after a star similar to our Sun gets closer to the end of its life. After expanding and becoming a 'red giant', the outer layers of the star are ejected becoming the shell shown in this picture.
At the center of the nebula, the star is now a 'white dwarf', having just a fraction of its original size. It emits ultraviolet radiation, which ionizes the ejected shell and making is visible to us
Photo taken with a Canon XSi and a Nexstar 8i SE + 0.63 FF/FR. 180 x 15 seconds exposures + 25 darks. I will add flats some day.
Edited European Southern Observatory image of the Skull Nebula, just in time for Halloween.
Original caption: Captured in astounding detail by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the eerie Skull Nebula is showcased in this new image in beautiful pink and red tones. This planetary nebula, also known as NGC 246, is the first known to be associated with a pair of closely bound stars orbited by a third outer star.
M57 Ring Nebula, Meade RCX400 12inch, Starlight Xpress SXVFH9,SXVAO, LRGB-42L-14R-14G-14B, seeing poor. AO using new Exview Autoguider. No Darks or Flats. Processed Maxim DL5, PS CS2, RC Gradient X. 24 August 2008.
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
The Ring Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra. Such objects are formed when a shell of ionized gas is expelled into the surrounding interstellar medium by a red giant star, which was passing through the last stage in its evolution before becoming a white dwarf. This image taken using a Canon T3i mounted at prime focus on a Meade LX-90 12" telescope.
a little return to processing. i'm supposed to be doing something else right now... oh well.
a pretty planetary nebula that seems to be a bit of a newer discovery. i was a little selective in processing the nebula separate from the stars and implemented some data from another eso telescope to increase colour contrast in the nebulosity.
kudos to Sakib for pointing this data out to me.
red: vlt/fors2 ha (FORS2.2012-07-01T05:25:13.081)
green: psuedo + ntt/efosc b#639 (EFOSC.2013-06-06T04:10:49.192)
blue: vlt/fors2 oiii (FORS2.2012-07-01T05:30:59.372)
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
The Owl Nebula (in the lower left) is a planetary nebula near the star Merak in Ursa Major. M108 is a barred spiral galaxy viewed nearly edge-on.
Here is the version of the other picture with annotations added in Pixinsight. See? I didn't lie. Lots of galaxies. My guess is that there are even a few galaxy clusters here, but I don't feel like checking
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1384107617300933
right now to be sure.
A rework of the stack taken on June 13-14, 2012. I created more temperature matched darks with the cooled camera. Only set left from the old library is the 14C. If I ever get enough of those to try again, I may revisit this data. At this point, because of the flaws in the lights, I think I'm finished with this target for the season.
Restacked in DSS 3.3.3 beta 47 with best 85% filter applied. This gives 24 lights that are "better" even with the light leaks. Focus is not perfect on several of the lights so that's what I hoped to remove with the 85% setting.
As before, this is a stack of images of the M57 region as taken through an Orion 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain telescope with a full-spectrum modified Pentax K10D camera. The camera is further modified with a peltier device to cool hot spots on the body to help keep thermal noise to a minimum. Baader Moon and Skyglow filter used to control some LP. Lights are 10 minutes at 400 ISO. Guiding done via SSAG on Orion ST80 on Losmandy GM8 mount. Off center position because of slop in the DEC axis.
After stacked, I brought the FIT into PI where I ran deconvolution, then DBE, then 200x iterations of masked stretches, then a few rounds of curves, then ACDNR. Final step of solving and annotating before exporting to LR 3.
Image Plate Solver script version 1.51
==================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
+0.000024753523 +0.000225118281 -0.276562916275
-0.000225158051 +0.000024794168 +0.373793262939
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.815 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -96.275 deg
Focal ............. 1366.01 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 48' 13.0" x 28' 5.4"
Image center ...... RA: 18 53 23.321 Dec: +32 56 18.56
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 18 52 03.895 Dec: +33 18 42.66
top-right ...... RA: 18 52 29.604 Dec: +32 30 47.68
bottom-left .... RA: 18 54 17.557 Dec: +33 21 47.99
bottom-right ... RA: 18 54 42.078 Dec: +32 33 51.34
The Hourglass Nebula is a planetary nebula (which can be misleading because they have nothing to do with planets). A planetary nebula is an expanding shell of glowing gas that was thrown out into space by a dying star. The Hourglass nebula is about 8000 light years away.
This image was taken using a 6" telescope at the St. George campus of the University of Toronto.
This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat's Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826. In each case, X-ray emission from Chandra is colored purple and optical emission from the Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue.
Check out the "NASA Thinks Pink" Flickr gallery:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157625045060125/
In the first part of this survey, published in a new paper, twenty one planetary nebulas within about 5000 light years of the Earth have been observed. The paper also includes studies of fourteen other planetary nebulas, within the same distance range, that Chandra had already observed.
A planetary nebula represents a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now. When a star like the sun uses up all of the hydrogen in its core, it expands into a red giant, with a radius that increases by tens to hundreds of times. In this phase, a star sheds most of its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a hot core that will soon contract to form a dense white dwarf star. A fast wind emanating from the hot core rams into the ejected atmosphere, pushes it outward, and creates the graceful, shell-like filamentary structures seen with optical telescopes.
The diffuse X-ray emission seen in about 30% of the planetary nebulas in the new Chandra survey, and all members of the gallery, is caused by shock waves as the fast wind collides with the ejected atmosphere. The new survey data reveal that the optical images of most planetary nebulas with diffuse X-ray emission display compact shells with sharp rims, surrounded by fainter halos. All of these compact shells have observed ages that are less than about 5000 years, which therefore likely represents the timescale for the strong shock waves to occur.
About half of the planetary nebulas in the study show X-ray point sources in the center, and all but one of these point sources show high energy X-rays that may be caused by a companion star, suggesting that a high frequency of central stars responsible for ejecting planetary nebulas have companions. Future studies should help clarify the role of double stars in determining the structure and evolution of planetary nebulas.
These results were published in the August 2012 issue of The Astronomical Journal. The first two authors are Joel Kastner and Rodolfo Montez Jr. of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, accompanied by 23 co-authors.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/pne/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIT/J.Kastner et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Taken from New Mexico Skies Observatory using an SBIG STL-6303 camera and 51-cm RCOS telescope on a Software Bisque PME 1 Mount.
Luminance filter
LINK
Other images from this series:
1. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51912817758/
2. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51913339650/
3. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51912722131/
4. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51912817498/
5. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51911758022/
6. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51911757837/
NOTE
The Soap Bubble Nebula, or PN G75.5+1.7, is a planetary nebula in the constellation Cygnus, near the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). It was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich using an Astro-Physics 160 mm refractor telescope with which he imaged the nebula on June 19, 2007 and on July 6, 2008. The nebula was later independently noted and reported to the International Astronomical Union by Keith B. Quattrocchi and Mel Helm who imaged PN G75.5+1.7 on July 17, 2008. The nebula measures 260″ in angular diameter with a central star that has a J band magnitude of 19.45.
A 'planetary nebula', formed by a 'dying' star puffing off its outer gas layers.
Manually, off-axis guided for 6 x 10 & 6 x 5-minute exposures at ISO 1600, f10.
Subs registered & stacked using DeepSkyStacker software.
Unmodded EOS 40D & Celestron C8 telescope
Imaged using the Bradford Robotic Telescope's Galaxy Camera (Schmidt-Cassegrain Celestron C14 optical tube. 3910mm focal length, 355mm aperture at f/11 with a FLI MicroLine fitted with a E2V CCD47-10. 1k x 1k pixels, each 13um square. Class 2).
Further processing done using FITS Liberator & Pixelmator 3.0 FX.