View allAll Photos Tagged PlanetaryNebula
As soon as I saw a photograph of Abell 31 taken by Kathy Walker, I just knew I had to create a pastel sketch of it!
Abell 31 is an ancient planetary nebula in the constellation of Cancer, thought to be about 2,000 light years away. Although it's quite large, it is quite faint.
To sketch this I used Stabilo CarbOthello pastel pencils on black paper, using the technique of scraping pastel dust onto the paper then blending with a dry, fluffy paint brush.
Photographing sketches that are on black paper on a sunny day is hellishly difficult, but I'm really pleased with the final result.
Simeis 188 + Minkowski 1-41 planetary nebula, NGC 6559, LBN 29
Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
RA/DEC 18 09 57.6 -24 06 35
Simeis 188 is an interstellar cloud of emission, reflection and dark nebulae. It hosts a star forming region. The 10 mag star HD 166056 which is involved in the brightest part of the nebula is located 1476 parsec away. The 7.3 mag star 11 Sgr is with 1195 parsec closer to us.
The brightest part of this nebula was first sighted by John Herschel on 1 July 1826 using his reflecting telescope with 18.3 inch aperture and 20 feet focal length. In his «Slough Catalogue» of 1833 he listed it as h 1996 and noted: «Several stars affected with nebulosity: The brightest taken.»
On 27 June 1837 observing from South Africa he listed the same nebula as h 3733 and noted: «Very faint, large, oblong, 5' long, 3' broad, place of a double star involved; 6 other stars nearby. Query if involved.»
In his «General catalogue» of 1864 he listed the nebula as GC 4384 and wrote: «very faint, very large, little extended, double star involved.»
In 1888 John L. E. Dreyer then added the nebula as NGC 6559 to his well known «New General Catalogue».
In 1952 the Russian astronomers Grigory Abramovich Shajn and Vera Fedorovna Gaze worked at the Simeiz Observatory in Crimea. They were probably the first ones to realize that the NGC and IC objects are all connected in a large complex: «Four distinct nebulae stand out against the background of S188: IC1274, IC1275, IC4685 and NGC6559.» Later this nebula complex referred to as Simeis (or Simeiz) 188, not to be confused with Sharpless catalogue.
Stewart Sharpless searched in the 1950-ies the photo plates of the «Palomar Observatory Sky Survey» made with the 48 inch Schmidt telescope and identified these objects as one big nebula complex that appeared to be connected to nearby Messier 8. The nebula was cataloged in 1959 as Sh 2-29 (40' diameter), Sh 2-31 (8' diameter) and Sh 2-32 (8' diameter).
The Canadian astronomer Sidney van den Bergh searched the photo plates of the «Palomar Observatory Sky Survey» (POSS) in 1966 and identified the reflection nebulae vdB 115 around star HD 165872.
Planetary Nebula Minkowski 1-41
(PN G006.7-02.2: M 1-41, PK 6-02.1, He 2- 355, Ve 62, VV 152, VV' 355, Wray 17- 112)
RA/DEC 18h 09m 30s -24° 12' 28"
In 1946 the German-American astronomer Rudolph Minkowski found the planetary nebula M 1-41 while he was looking for H-α emissions on the photographic plates taken with the 60 inch or 100 inch telescope on Mount Wilson.
This unusual shaped planetary nebula has a relatively bright irregular central region and faint, very extended bipolar lobes in orientation of PA 9°. The lobes are only visible in infrared at 8 µm. The central star has atemperature of 142'400 K. The planetary nebula is superimposed on the background nebula and lies at a distance of 848 parsec.
NGC 7027, also known as the Jewel Bug Nebula or the Magic Carpet Nebula, is a very young and dense planetary nebula located around 3,000 light-years (920 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Discovered in 1878 by Édouard Stephan using the 800 mm (31 in) reflector at Marseille Observatory, it is one of the smallest planetary nebulae and by far the most extensively studied.
Observation data: J2000 epoch
Right ascension: 21h 07m 1.7s
Declination: +42° 14′ 11″
Distance: 3,000 ly
Apparent magnitude (V): 10
Apparent dimensions (V): 16" × 12"
Constellation: Cygnus
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 81 x 60 second exposures, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: August 25, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Abell 72, a faint planetary nebula in the constellation Delphinus, is captured here alongside the distant galaxy PGC 65491, which was a challenge to bring out in the final image. This cropped and zoomed-in version emphasizes the intricate details of both celestial objects, revealing more of the nebula’s structure and the faint spiral galaxy's subtle light. The Oxygen-III data enhances the nebula’s delicate textures, while the LRGB filters highlight the vibrant colors of the stars and nebula. This closer view offers a deeper look into the beauty of both the nebula and galaxy, making this image worth exploring from a more intimate perspective.
See also my full version: www.flickr.com/photos/101543943@N04/54057995700/in/datepo...
Technical Details:
Telescope: 🔭 ASA 400 RC f/8
Mount: 🌌 ASA DDM100
Camera: 📷 ZWO ASI 6200 MM Pro (IMX455 CMOS sensor)
Filters: 🎨 OIII, LRGB
Exposure:
OIII: 900s x 6
LRGB: 300s x 6 for each channel
Lum: 600s x 3
Total Integration:
OIII: 90 minutes
RGB: 30 minutes per channel
Lum: 30 minutes
Processing: The image was processed using MaximDL, PixInsight, and Photoshop, and this version showcases a zoomed-in view to emphasize the nebula's intricate structure and the galaxy PGC 65491.
Location and Date: Namibia, September 2024
Enjoy this closer look at Abell 72 and PGC 65491, a zoomed-in perspective that highlights the ethereal beauty of these distant cosmic wonders.
Thanks for watching,
Haim
This image of Caldwell 2’s central star was taken in 2009 using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. The observation was made as a follow-up to an earlier study of possible companion stars in planetary nebulae conducted with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Wade (Pennsylvania State University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-caldwell-catalog
This image set showcases three views of the Butterfly Nebula, also called NGC 6302. The Butterfly Nebula, located about 3400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, is one of the best-studied planetary nebulae in our galaxy.
Planetary nebulae are among the most beautiful and most elusive creatures in the cosmic zoo. These nebulae form when stars with masses between about 0.8 and 8 times the mass of the Sun shed most of their mass at the end of their lives. The planetary nebula phase is fleeting, lasting only about 20 000 years.
The Butterfly Nebula is a bipolar nebula, meaning that it has two lobes that spread in opposite directions, forming the ‘wings’ of the butterfly. A dark band of dusty gas poses as the butterfly’s ‘body’. This band is actually a doughnut-shaped torus that we see from the side, hiding the nebula’s central star – the ancient core of a Sun-like star that energises the nebula and causes it to glow. The dusty doughnut may be responsible for the nebula’s insectoid shape by preventing gas from flowing outward from the star equally in all directions.
The first and second of the three images shown here highlight the bipolar nature of the Butterfly Nebula in optical and near-infrared light captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The newer image on the right taken by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope zooms in on the centre of the Butterfly Nebula and its dusty torus, providing an unprecedented view of its complex structure. The Webb data are supplemented with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a powerful network of radio dishes.
While the nebula’s central star is blanketed with thick, dusty gas at optical wavelengths, Webb’s infrared capabilities reveal the central star and show the doughnut-shaped torus and interconnected bubbles of dusty gas that surround it.
[Image description: Three views of the same nebula, presented side by side. The left and middle images, which are labeled ‘Hubble Optical’ and ‘Hubble Near IR’, show the nebula at roughly the same scale. These two images show some similar features, including a dark dust lane that runs through the centre of the nebula and two broad clouds that emerge from either side of the dust lane like the outstretched wings of a butterfly. A diamond-shaped region centred on the dust lane is outlined in each of these images. In the optical Hubble image, the nebula appears clumpy and nearly opaque, with few background stars showing through the cloudy material. The nebula appears in different shades of cream, yellow and orange, with the lightest colours appearing closest to the centre. The background of space is black with a handful of stars that are tinged pink. In the near-infrared Hubble image, the nebula appears cream coloured and most opaque near the centre, then becomes reddish with purple streaks and more translucent out toward the wings of the nebula. There are hundreds of background stars in the image, many of which are visible through the nebula. The third and final image zooms in on the diamond-shaped region near the centre of the other two images. This image is labeled ‘Webb & ALMA, Mid-IR & Sub-mm’. This image is completely different from the other two, showing a bright source at the centre that is surrounded by greenish nebulosity and several looping lines in cream, orange and pink. The upper-right and lower-left corners of this image show a purple streak pointing out of the image.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, J. Kastner, K. Noll, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Hirano, J. Kastner, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb); CC BY 4.0
Not a real space photo. Light art. Created for the Deep Space Imagineers group Challenge #3.
Single exposure. Ingredients: One textured plate glass, one clear plate glass, one yellow gel filter, 10W40 oil, used oil, Dawn dishwashing liquid, one flashlight, one iPod Touch, a little air, blue and yellow LEDs. Short focus pull. A cool night tonight made for less hot pixels than I'm used to for such a long exposure. Left the hot pixels in, but will probably burn them out later.
I have been delaying posting this image for a while now as I wasn't sure if I was fully happy with it or not, but I figured it's as good as it's going to get.
I took this one in Cyprus last august. For those that are not familiar with night sky, this is the galactic core and the central arm of the Milky Way galaxy as it can be seen in northern hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye as a feint carpet of light, roughly extending from south to north (brighter in south than north).
For those interested, here is the technical info. It is a 47-image panorama measuring 90 megapixels (15000x6000) taken with a 50mm lens.
I am running an astrophotography workshop in August 2015 in Cyprus. Why don't you join me to photograph the Milky Way and Perseids Meteor Shower?
You can find more information on my website: esentunar.com/workshops
This is also called a blinking nebula, because if you look at it through a telelscope and move your eye around it appears to blink. I wasn't able to see it through the eye piece at all, but the camera picked it up just fine.
Update 2014 June 20: Reading about Gomez's Hamburger I now realize it's not a planetary nebula. It's actually a protoplanetary disk. Hooray! I wonder if more objects will change categories? For now, there are 99 Planetary Nebulas and a Protoplanetary Disk.
Update 2014 Mar 26: To my absolute horror, Flickr has updated their interface and now in order to access the notes and find out about the individual nebulas, you have to scroll through this very long list until the correct one is highlighted. How dreadful.
Update 2014 Feb 08: This work won the "favorite non-MIT entry" at MIT's Art of Astrophysics competition. Click the link and check out the other winners and entries!
Update 2014 Feb 02: I added notes to identify all 100 planetaries which you can click to see a close-ups. Good thing Flickr allows me to add exactly 100 notes and no more! Also, while doing this I sort of took inventory of them and was surprised to realize that I completely omitted The Southerner from the collage. Oops! I'm sorry, NGC 3918.
Inspired by insect illustration posters, this is a large collage of planetary nebulas I put together bit by bit as I processed them. All are presented north up and at apparent size relative to one another--I did not rotate or resize them in order to satisfy compositional aesthetics (if you spot any errors, let me know). Colors are aesthetic choices, especially since most planetary nebulas are imaged with narrowband filters.
How many of them can you identify?
Happy Holidays. :)
I was able to get a little more Ha last night as well as some LRGB so have a first run at a complete image. Not thrilled with the Luminance data - I think my focus was a bit off, but I had to use it to get the center star since it was not in the Ha data so the overall Luminance channel is mostly the Ha with a little Lum just on the ring itself (thanks to layers and masks) ... RGB binned worked well to make the most of the few hours I had left after that last night to at least get some decent color. Rain predicted for the next week straight so it might be a while til I can do more on this.
Getting a little coma on the edges so I need to adjust the distance on the setup, but the center stars look ok (other than iffy focus) so it should be an easy fix once I pull out the caliper to measure and adjust. I did do some custom star-work to fix a few of the more bloated ones from the clouds on the Ha channel and then some deconvolving and sharpening throughout. Basically, this data needed a lot of fixing, but wasn't originally going to be imaging this target, was just playing with the OAG so I didn't take the time I normally do to focus precisely and spacing and all - lesson learned.
Imaging Scope: Celestron CPC800XLT
Imaging Camera: Atik 314L+
Guide Camera: StarlightXpress Lodestar
Filters: Astronomik Ha, L, R, G, B
Integration details:
Ha: 7x1800s, 3x1200s = 4.5 hrs
L: 12x600s = 2 hrs
R,G,B: 12x300s, 2x2 each = 3 hrs total
Total time: 9.5 hrs
The IDIOTs have processed another Hullbull RST image from a galaxy in the Abell 2029 cluster. This image captures a white dwarf consuming matter from its red giant partner in this binary star system. Evidence of previous atmosphere shedding by the red giant are observed on the left side of the image. The white dwarf appears to have a CME heading off to the upper right. Hullbull mission control will revisit this system again in the event the white dwarf goes supernova.
Not a real space image. Light art.
Composite of two unaltered images. One image using Waterworld technique/100mm lens/yellow and orange LEDs to create yellow plasma/CME pattern. Second long exposure, 100mm lens (base layer/EXIF data) to create stars; three partially masked "burns" to create segregated star color patterns using water droplet technique and white, blue, yellow colored LEDs; cover/recompose, create larger stars using red and blue LEDs, with and without diffraction filter; cover lens, recompose again, create two solar bodies using red, yellow and blue LEDS and tequila shot glass, then a partially masked plasma ball to add blue/pink pattern between two "stars". Selective burning and cloning to remove several "hot" pixels resulting from the very long exposure. Was going to leave them be as stars, but they just looked too weird.
This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene.
What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes!
A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.
The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), the newest camera aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the last servicing mission to upgrade and repair Hubble.
NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way Galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the center. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.
The star's surface temperature is estimated to be about 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest known stars in our galaxy. Spectroscopic observations made with ground-based telescopes show that the gas is roughly 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is unusually hot compared to a typical planetary nebula.
The WFC3 image reveals a complex history of ejections from the star. The star first evolved into a huge red-giant star, with a diameter of about 1,000 times that of our Sun. It then lost its extended outer layers. Some of this gas was cast off from its equator at a relatively slow speed, perhaps as low as 20,000 miles an hour, creating the doughnut-shaped ring. Other gas was ejected perpendicular to the ring at higher speeds, producing the elongated "wings" of the butterfly-shaped structure. Later, as the central star heated up, a much faster stellar wind, a stream of charged particles traveling at more than 2 million miles an hour, plowed through the existing wing-shaped structure, further modifying its shape.
The image also shows numerous finger-like projections pointing back to the star, which may mark denser blobs in the outflow that have resisted the pressure from the stellar wind.
The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. WFC3 is equipped with a wide variety of filters that isolate light emitted by various chemical elements, allowing astronomers to infer properties of the nebular gas, such as its temperature, density, and composition.
The white-colored regions are areas where light is emitted by sulfur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star). The white blob with the crisp edge at upper right is an example of one of those shock waves.
NGC 6302 was imaged on July 27, 2009, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image.
These Hubble observations of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 were part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/2616/news_release/2009-25
See this link for an alternate near-ultraviolet to near-infrared view of the Butterfly Nebula, released in 2020: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2020/news-2020-31?Y...
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
We thought we'd mark the last night of astro-dark in London for the next two months by imaging a bright planetary nebula - and an object we haven't imaged for many years. Its brightness makes it a fairly easy target for viewing as well as for imaging and processing - perfect for when you have less than an hour of real darkness to work with.
The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as the Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, and NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula (a type of emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives). It is located in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1360 light-years. The Dumbbell Nebula appears shaped like a prolate spheroid and is viewed from our perspective along the plane of its equator. Its age is estimated to be between 9,800 and 14,600 years. The central star, a white dwarf progenitor, is estimated to have a diameter of 77,946.04 km making it larger than most other known white dwarfs.
22/05/2022
022 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
055 x dark frames
025 x flat frames
100 x bias frames
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 1 hour and 50 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: Zwo ASI 120 MC and SVBONY SV105 with ZWO USBST4 guider adapter
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro with anti-dew heater
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Filter: Light Pollution filter and Optolong L-Pro
In images, the Helix Nebula — a gaseous envelope ejected by a dying, Sun-like star — resembles a colorful donut. But Hubble Space Telescope observations show that the Helix's structure is much more complex, consisting of two disks nearly perpendicular to each other.
Using Hubble's data of the Helix, astronomers created a three-dimensional model showing the two disks.
Astronomers think the disks formed during two separate epochs of mass loss by the dying star. The inner disk was formed about 6,600 years ago; the outer ring, about 12,000 years ago. The inner disk is expanding slightly faster than the outer disk.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2004/news-2004-32.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
This is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly ionized oxygen (blue). The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter that accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. In previous ground-based images, MyCn18 appeared to be a pair of large outer rings with a smaller central one, but the fine details could not be seen.
According to one theory for the formation of planetary nebulae, the hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud that is more dense near its equator than near its poles. What appears as a bright elliptical ring in the center, and at first sight might be mistaken for an equatorially dense region, is seen on closer inspection to be a potato-shaped structure with a symmetry axis dramatically different from that of the larger hourglass. The hot star that has been thought to eject and illuminate the nebula, and therefore expected to lie at its center of symmetry, is clearly off center. Hence MyCn18, as revealed by Hubble, does not fulfill some crucial theoretical expectations.
Hubble also revealed other features in MyCn18 that are completely new and unexpected. For example, there is a pair of intersecting elliptical rings in the central region, which appear to be the rims of a smaller hourglass. There are the intricate patterns of the etchings on the hourglass walls. The arc-like etchings could be the remnants of discrete shells ejected from the star when it was younger, or flow instabilities, or could result from the action of a narrow beam of matter impinging on the hourglass walls. An unseen companion star and accompanying gravitational effects may well be necessary in order to explain the structure of MyCn18.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/397/news_release/1996-07
Credit: Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, and NASA
M57, the Ring Nebula, flanked by Sheliak and Sulafat, in the constellation Lyra.
2020-06-25
Olympus Pen-F Digital
M.Zuiko 40-150 f2.8 PRO
44 exposures @ISO 1600, ranging from 15s to 30s, stacked using SiriL
Taken using my homemade barndoor mount, from my balcony in the centre of light-polluted Montreal.
Popularly known as the Eye of God, this is the Helix Nebula, NGC7293 is a planetary nebula roughly 700 light years away and about 2 light years across.
This image combines RGB and Narrowband images at wildly different scales using a combination of RGB from an RC16 with Apogee U9000 with Ha+OIII from FSQ106ED at f3.7 with SBIG ST10xe.
There is a very good article on this object and its x-ray data here, at the Chandra website. I can't think of anything unique or insightful to add. I avoided greatly saturating the red and yellow knots as seen in other versions of this same image. I think it gives a better sense that the blueish parts are probably a sphere surrounding the whole thing and not a disc shape which happens to face us, but I guess it could be a disc. If only we could get a different viewing angle for these things, they'd be easier to understand.
2020/02/18 addendum: To be clear, there is no x-ray data in this image.
Red: hst_11122_05_wfpc2_f658n_wf_sci
Green: hst_11122_05_wfpc2_f656n_wf_sci
Blue: hst_11122_05_wfpc2_f502n_wf_sci
---Photo details----
Binned 2x2
Stacks Red: 16x3 min
Stacks Green: 16x3 min
Stacks Blue: 16x3 min
Darks : 100x3 min
Exposure Time : 2hr24min
Stack program : AstroArt 7
Stack mode : Sigma clip
---Photo scope---
Camera : QSI 660 wsg-8
CCD Temperature : -10C
Filter(s) used: Astrodon Red, Astrodon Green, Astrodon Blue
Tube : Astro-Physics 130 EDF F/6
Field flattener / Reducer : Astro-Physics flattener
Effective focal length : 780 mm
Effective aperture : ~ F/6
---Guide scope---
Camera : Lodestar X2
Off Axis Guiding: yes
Guide exposure : 0.5 sec
---Mount and other stuff---
Mount : Skywatcher AZ-EQ-6 GT
Like many other so-called planetary nebulae, IC 4406 (also known as the Retina Nebula) exhibits a high degree of symmetry; the left and right halves are nearly mirror images of the other. If we could fly around IC 4406 in a starship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast doughnut of material streaming outward from the dying star. From Earth, we are viewing the doughnut from the side. This side view allows us to see the intricate tendrils of dust that have been compared to the eye's retina. In other planetary nebulae, like the Ring Nebula (NGC 6720), we view the doughnut from the top.
The doughnut of material confines the intense radiation coming from the remnant of the dying star. Gas on the inside of the doughnut is ionized by light from the central star and glows. Light from oxygen atoms is rendered blue in this image; hydrogen is shown as green, and nitrogen as red. The range of color in the final image shows the differences in concentration of these three gases in the nebula.
Unseen in the Hubble image is a larger zone of neutral gas that is not emitting visible light, but which can be seen by radio telescopes.
One of the most interesting features of IC 4406 is the irregular lattice of dark lanes that criss-cross the center of the nebula. These lanes are about 160 astronomical units wide (1 astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the Sun). They are located right at the boundary between the hot glowing gas that produces the visual light imaged here and the neutral gas seen with radio telescopes. We see the lanes in silhouette because they have a density of dust and gas that is a thousand times higher than the rest of the nebula. The dust lanes are like a rather open mesh veil that has been wrapped around the bright doughnut.
The fate of these dense knots of material is unknown. Will they survive the nebula's expansion and become dark denizens of the space between the stars or simply dissipate?
This image is a composite of data taken by Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in June 2001 and January 2002. Filters used to create this color image show oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen gas glowing in this object.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1209/news_release/2002-14
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University)
Wide field view of M57, the Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra. I used a 300mm lens piggy-backed on my Meade alt-azi mount, 8 x 20 seconds at ISO1600 and stacked in ImagesPlus software.
While trying to write an article regarding the Hubble archive today, I revisited this object and decided to process it again. Previously I used NICMOS data for the infrared part, visible in orange as the slightly blurry-looking rings and arcs around the brighter central structure. The old version is here.
I think the new version offers up a somewhat clearer vision of the infrared portion. NICMOS was always a bit difficult to work with because there were a lot of "features"—as they have been charitably called—to work out of the image. This version uses observations made by the newer WFC3/IR, and I am a lot more confident that every little faint detail you see here is indeed the nebula and not some instrumental wonkiness.
I removed the diffraction spikes once again because they were very distracting and easy to confuse with the structure of the object.
Data from following two proposals was used to create the image:
Characterization of the WFC3 IR Grisms
Hubble Heritage Observations of PNe with WFPC2
Orange: WFC3/IR F140W
Green: WFPC2 F658N
Blue: WFPC2 F656N
North is up.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the planetary nebula IC 289, located in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. Formerly a star like our Sun, it is now just a cloud of ionised gas being pushed out into space by the remnants of the star’s core, visible as a small bright dot in the middle of the cloud. Weirdly enough, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. Early observers, when looking through small telescopes, could only see undefined, smoky forms that looked like gaseous planets — hence the name. The term has stuck even though modern telescopes like Hubble have made it clear that these objects are not planets at all, but the outer layers of dying stars being thrown off into space. Stars shine as a result of nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, converting hydrogen to helium. All stars are stable, balancing the inward push caused by their gravity with the outwards thrust from the inner fusion reactions in their cores. When all the hydrogen is consumed the equilibrium is broken; the gravitational forces become more powerful than the outward pressure from the fusion process and the core starts to collapse, heating up as it does so. When the hot, shrinking core gets hot enough, the helium nuclei begin to fuse into carbon and oxygen and the collapse stops. However, this helium-burning phase is highly unstable and huge pulsations build up, eventually becoming large enough to blow the whole star’s atmosphere away. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Serge Meunier.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgement: Serge Meunier
So, the last couple nights we have had, we've been blessed with superb clear weather and amazing transparency, and I have actually been thankful for those on a few astronomy groups on FB for helping me through an alignment issue I had on the LX200 the other night.
I spent a lot of my target acquisition on NGC 6946 and NGC 7023, but I also spent about an hour each night acquiring photons on the Dumbbell Nebula, which I had greater luck with, IMO.
I shot a series of about 230 usable 30-second frames @ ISO2000 and then followed it up with some darks and flats. The good thing is that both nights, the temperatures were about the same so I didn't have any temperature gradient issues - and the low temps held the noise levels down on the D5100. The bad thing? On the full-res uncropped *.TIF, I ended up with a lot of amp glow at the bottom that I wish I could get rid of. It seems to be getting worse, but I wonder if that's because my camera is 'aging' a bit.
Alas, after stacking in Deep Sky Stacker (a process that nearly dragged this computer to its knees), and three further hours in Adobe PS CS3, I was able to call it a 'finished product'.
I'm pretty happy with the results I got. If only I had a guide scope and an autoguider!
Taken on the night of 2021-03-18, this pair of star clusters in Puppis are along the Northern Hemisphere winter path of the Milky Way. A bit more than 10° east of Sirius, M46 (on the left) and M47 (on the right) stand out in long exposure, wide field shots of this part of the sky (like this one: flic.kr/p/22MMqbL). There is also a planetary nebula (NGC 2438) amidst the stars of M46. Another planetary nebula (PK231+4.1 --- can you find it?) is north of that, and the older star cluster NGC 2425 is between M46 and M47 in this shot.
This is a mosaic composed of 3 separate panels. Stacks of at least 25 sub-frames of 120 s each were taken with a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with HyperStar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD with light pollution filter. There are some artifacts around the brighter stars in M47. Preprocessing in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, mosaic composition, and processing in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.
The image spans a region that is 105' by 55' and is centered near RA 7h 39m, DEC -14° 40'.
First attempt at a planetary nebula. Exposures taken over three warm nights. With the sun almost not setting here in the north getting time to gather some photons is scarce. On the other hand, at least the weather (clouds) doesn't suck as much as it did when the nights where still long.
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,[5] and a popular observing target in amateur telescopes.
I was going through some imaging from earlier this year and found some images taken in February (Weatherly, Pennsylvania) of Messier 46 (M46). This final image is 8 x 60 seconds at ISO 1600 using a Canon T4i and 400mm lens. What I like with the M46 open cluster is that you get a bonus, the planetary nebula NGC 2438. While not part of the open cluster, it appears in the same view because it lines up behind the cluster. The planetary nebula was likely formed by the death of a red giant star in its center.
The final item in the Caldwell catalog, Caldwell 109 resembles a phantom snowball. The glowing shroud of gas was shed by its central star in a final act before dying. Like all stars, the one in the middle of this nebula spent its life participating in a precarious balance act, with the outward pressure generated by nuclear fusion countered by the inward pull of gravity. During most of the star’s lifetime the two held an uneasy truce, making the star a giant, controlled nuclear bomb.
When the star began to exhaust its hydrogen fuel, however, there wasn’t enough pressure to fight off gravity. The core began to contract, becoming denser and hotter, triggering the fusion of helium into carbon. The heat produced caused the star’s outer layers of gas to expand, transforming the star into a red giant. After spending about a billion years as a red giant, the star began a 10,000-year process to shed its outer layers of gas, ultimately uncovering the remaining core of the star — a white dwarf. High-energy radiation from the white dwarf makes the cast-off gaseous layers glow, creating a ghostly specter in the night sky. In tens of thousands of years, Caldwell 109 will fade into darkness as the white dwarf cools like an ember until it finally burns out completely.
Planetary nebulae like Caldwell 109 are especially interesting to scientists because they represent a future stage of our own Sun, which is destined to meet a similar fate in about 6 billion years. This Hubble image was taken in visible and infrared light using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 as part of a survey of planetary nebulae. The observations revealed many surprisingly intricate, glowing patterns spun into space by aging stars: pinwheels, lawn-sprinkler–style jets, elegant goblet shapes, and even some that look like a rocket engine’s exhaust.
Caldwell 109 was discovered by John Herschel in 1835 and subsequently cataloged as NGC 3195. It lies 5,500 light-years away toward the Chamaeleon constellation. It is visible year-round from the Southern Hemisphere but is highest in the autumn. With a magnitude of 11.6 it can be a challenging target to spot for small telescopes. Through a moderate-sized telescope, Caldwell 109 will look like a swollen star.
For more information about Hubble’s observations of Caldwell 109, see:
www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9738c12/
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1997/news-1997-38.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Howard Bond (STScI); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
The famous Helix Nebula in ultraviolet from the GALEX mission. There's a version out there that includes infrared data from Spitzer, relegating the GALEX data merely to the blue channel. I think it deserves an image of its own, all by itself. Of course, now I want to go dig around in Spitzer's archive...
Red: NUV (Near ultraviolet)
Green: Pseudo (R+G 50/50)
Blue: FUV (Far ultraviolet)
North is up.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the ‘Hourglass’ Nebula, the young planetary nebula MyCn18, taken in 1996. This object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of ‘etchings’ in its walls. According to one theory, the hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud, which is denser near its equator than near its poles.
A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star. The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter that accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars.
Expanding the frontiers of the visible Universe, Hubble looks deep into space with cameras that can see across the entire optical spectrum, infrared to ultraviolet. Hubble is a collaboration between ESA and NASA, and in many ways has revolutionised modern astronomy, not only by being an efficient tool for making new discoveries, but also by driving astronomical research in general.
For more information:
www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM106WO4HD_index_0_m.html
Credit: JPL/NASA/ESA
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged striking details of the planetary nebula NGC 2818, which lies in the southern constellation of Pyxis (the Compass). The spectacular structure of the planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a star that were expelled into interstellar space.
The glowing gaseous shrouds in the nebula were shed by the central star after it ran out of fuel to sustain the nuclear reactions in its core. Our own Sun will undergo a similar process, but not for another 5 billion years or so. Planetary nebulae fade gradually over tens of thousands of years. The hot, remnant stellar core of NGC 2818 will eventually cool off for billions of years as a white dwarf.
NGC 2818 is often heralded as one of the galaxy's few planetary nebulae to be discovered as a member of an open star cluster. The other celebrated case is the planetary nebula NGC 2438 in the open star cluster designated Messier 46. Recent investigations, however, suggest that both cases merely amount to a chance alignment, as the objects are actually located at varying distances along the line-of-sight. To date, there has yet to be a single established case of a galactic planetary nebula discovered in an open cluster.
Planetary nebulae have been detected in several globular star clusters in our galaxy. These densely packed, gravitationally bound groups of hundreds of thousands to millions of stars are far older than their open cluster counterparts.
This Hubble image was taken in November 2008 with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The colors in the image represent a range of emissions coming from the clouds of the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/2464/news_release/2009-05
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety ant. This dramatic Hubble Space Telescope image, showing 10 times more detail, reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun-like star.
The Hubble image directly challenges old ideas about the last stages in the lives of stars. By observing Sun-like stars as they approach their deaths, the Hubble image of Mz 3 — along with pictures of other planetary nebulae — shows that our Sun's fate probably will be more interesting, complex, and striking than astronomers once imagined.
Though approaching the violence of an explosion, the ejection of gas from the dying star at the center of Mz 3 has intriguing symmetrical patterns unlike the chaotic patterns expected from an ordinary explosion. Scientists using Hubble would like to understand how a spherical star can produce such prominent, non-spherical symmetries in the gas that it ejects.
One possibility is that the central star of Mz 3 has a closely orbiting companion that exerts strong gravitational tidal forces, which shape the outflowing gas. For this to work, the orbiting companion star would have to be close to the dying star, about the distance of Earth from the Sun. At that distance the orbiting companion star wouldn't be far outside the hugely bloated hulk of the dying star. It's even possible that the dying star has consumed its companion, which now orbits inside of it.
A second possibility is that, as the dying star spins, its strong magnetic fields are wound up into complex shapes. Charged winds moving at speeds up to 1,000 kilometers per second from the star, much like those in our Sun's solar wind but millions of times denser, are able to follow the twisted field lines on their way out into space. These dense winds can be rendered visible by ultraviolet light from the hot central star or from highly supersonic collisions with the ambient gas that excites the material into florescence.
No other planetary nebula observed by Hubble resembles Mz 3 very closely. M2-9 comes close, but the outflow speeds in Mz 3 are up to 10 times larger than those of M2-9. Interestingly, the very massive, young star Eta Carinae shows a very similar outflow pattern.
Astronomers used Hubble to observe this planetary nebula, Mz 3, in July 1997 with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. One year later, astronomers again snapped pictures of Mz 3 using slightly different filters. This intriguing image is a composite of several filters from each of the two datasets.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/1020/news_release/2001-05
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Lab) and B. Balick (University of Washington)
In its first glimpse following the successful December 1999 servicing mission, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a majestic view of planetary nebula NGC 2392, the glowing remains of a dying, Sun-like star. This stellar relic was first spied by William Herschel in 1787. In this Hubble telescope image, the nebula displays a disk of material embellished with a ring of comet-shaped objects, with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. Although the bright central region resembles a ball of twine, it is, in reality, a bubble of material being blown into space by the central star's intense "wind" of high-speed material.
The planetary nebula began forming about 10,000 years ago, when the dying star began flinging material into space. The nebula is composed of two elliptically shaped lobes of matter streaming above and below the dying star. In this photo, one bubble lies in front of the other, obscuring part of the second lobe.
Scientists believe that a ring of dense material around the star's equator, ejected during its red giant phase, created the nebula's shape. This dense waist of material is plodding along at 72,000 miles per hour (115,000 kilometers per hour), preventing high-velocity stellar winds from pushing matter along the equator. Instead, the 900,000-mile-per-hour (1.5-million-kilometer-per-hour) winds are sweeping the material above and below the star, creating the elongated bubbles. The bubbles are not smooth like balloons but have filaments of denser matter. Each bubble is about 1 light-year long and about half a light-year wide. Scientists are still puzzled about the origin of the comet-shaped features in the disk. One possible explanation is that these objects formed from a collision of slow- and fast-moving gases.
NGC 2392 is about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Gemini. The picture was taken January 10 and 11, 2000, with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The nebula's glowing gases produce the colors in this image: nitrogen (red), hydrogen (green), oxygen (blue), and helium (violet).
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2000/07/940-Image.ht...
Credit: NASA, Andrew Fruchter and the ERO Team (Sylvia Baggett [STScI], Richard Hook [ST-ECF], Zoltan Levay [STScI])
NGC1360 aks The Robin's Egg nebula is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Fornax. This image reveals the complex and intricate structure within the nebula, showcasing a stunning palette derived from Hydrogen-alpha (Ha) and Oxygen-III (OIII) filters. The nebula's vivid colors and detailed features are brought to life with RGB data for the stars, adding depth and richness to the image.
Technical Details:
Telescope: 🔭 ASA RC600 24inch F4.5
Mount: 🌌 ASA DDM200
Camera: 📷 Moravian C3 Pro
Filters: 🎨 FLI Ha, OIII, RGB
Exposure:
Ha: 300s x 3
OIII: 300s x 9
Red: 60s x 5
Green: 60s x 5
Blue: 60s x 5
Total Integration:
Ha: 15 minutes
OIII: 45 minutes
RGB: 15 minutes
Processing:
The image was processed using MaximDL, PixInsight, and Photoshop to enhance the nebula's vivid details and colors, bringing out the intricate structure and the rich palette of NGC 1360.
Location and Date:
Namibia, June 2022
Enjoy this celestial masterpiece, which highlights both the beauty and complexity of NGC 1360, a stunning example of a planetary nebula with a rich and varied structure.
Thanks for watching,
Haim
The Helix Nebula. This image is a combination of data taken last year and this year in two sessions. This object is a very challenging target because from this location it is very low in the sky and there isn't much time to image it before it disappears behind trees and buildings. To shoot it from North London means pointing a telescope straight into the glow of London light pollution and taking long exposures. The subs looked terrible on both sessions so I was amazed that anything at all came out after stacking. On the second session we also had a nearly full moon to contend with and that washed the images out even more. The final image required a lot of processing and still looks rather noisy.
[From Wikipedia] The Helix Nebula (also known as NGC 7293 or Caldwell 63) is a planetary nebula located approximately 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. This object is one of the closest to the Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae. The nebula spans about 2.5 light-years and its age is estimated to be 10,966 years. The Helix Nebula has sometimes been referred to as the "Eye of God" in pop culture, as well as the "Eye of Sauron".
The Helix Nebula is an example of a planetary nebula, formed by the death of an intermediate to low-mass star, which sheds its outer layers near the end of its evolution. Gases from the star in the surrounding space appear, from our vantage point, as if we are looking down a helix structure. The remnant central stellar core, known as the central star (CS) of the planetary nebula, is destined to become a white dwarf star. The observed glow of the central star is so energetic that it causes the previously expelled gases to brightly fluoresce.
09-10/09/2020
016 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
050 x dark frames
020 x flat frames
100 x bias frames
Binning 1x1
23-24/09/2021
013 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
006 x 180-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
050 x dark frames
040 x flat frames
100 x bias frames
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 2 hours and 43 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI 120 MC
Guiding Camera: SVBONY SV105 with ZWO USBST4 guider adapter
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro with anti-dew heater
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Light pollution filter
Optolong L-PRO Maximum Luminosity Filter
Taken from New Mexico Skies Observatory using an SBIG STL-6303 camera and 51-cm RCOS telescope on a Software Bisque PME 1 Mount
Mapped Colour
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.
Ladies rock outer space! Vote to make this a real LEGO set: ideas.lego.com/projects/147876
This vignette of astronomer Nancy Grace Roman is part of "Women of NASA," a project on the LEGO Ideas contest celebrating five pioneering women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Roman is known to many as the "Mother of Hubble" for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope, seen here. One of the first female executives at NASA, she also developed NASA's astronomy research program.
If this project receives 10,000 votes, you could soon buy one at a LEGO store near you!
The full Women of NASA set includes four additional minifigures — of Sally Ride, Mae Jemison, Katherine Johnson, and Margaret Hamilton — plus vignettes including a mini space shuttle, instruments of the Apollo era, and a recreation of a famous photo depicting the reams of code that sent humans to the moon.
To see the full set and to vote, visit: ideas.lego.com/projects/147876. Thanks for your support!
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed a nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. Planetary nebulae represent the final brief stage in the life of a medium-sized star like our Sun. While consuming the last of the fuel in its core, the dying star expels a large portion of its outer envelope. This material then becomes heated by the radiation from the stellar remnant and radiates, producing glowing clouds of gas that can show complex structures, as the ejection of mass from the star is uneven in both time and direction.
A spectacular example of this beautiful complexity is seen in the bluish lobes of NGC 5189. Most of the nebula is knotty and filamentary in its structure. As a result of the mass-loss process, the planetary nebula has been created with two nested structures, tilted with respect to each other, that expand away from the center in different directions.
This double bipolar or quadrupolar structure could be explained by the presence of a binary companion orbiting the central star and influencing the pattern of mass ejection during its nebula-producing death throes. The remnant of the central star, having lost much of its mass, now lives its final days as a white dwarf. However, there is no visual candidate for the possible companion.
The bright golden ring that twists and tilts through the image is made up of a large collection of radial filaments and cometary knots. These are usually formed by the combined action of photo-ionizing radiation and stellar winds.
This image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on July 6, 2012, in filters tuned to the specific colors of fluorescing sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Broad filters in the visible and near-infrared were used to capture the star colors.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/3124/news_release/2012-49
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Astronomers may not have observed the fabled "Stairway to Heaven," but they have photographed something almost as intriguing: ladder-like structures surrounding a dying star.
This image, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals startling details of one of the most unusual nebulae known in our Milky Way. Cataloged as HD 44179, this nebula is more commonly called the "Red Rectangle" because of its unique shape and color as seen with ground-based telescopes.
Hubble has revealed a wealth of new features in the Red Rectangle that cannot be seen with ground-based telescopes looking through Earth's turbulent atmosphere.
Hubble's sharp pictures show that the Red Rectangle is not really rectangular, but has an overall X-shaped structure, which astronomers interpret as arising from outflows of gas and dust from the star in the center. The outflows are ejected from the star in two opposing directions, producing a shape like two ice-cream cones touching at their tips. Also remarkable are straight features that appear like rungs on a ladder, making the Red Rectangle look similar to a spider web, a shape unlike that of any other known nebula in the sky. These rungs may have arisen in episodes of mass ejection from the star occurring every few hundred years. They could represent a series of nested, expanding structures similar in shape to wine glasses, seen exactly edge-on so that their rims appear as straight lines from our vantage point.
The star in the center of the Red Rectangle is one that began its life as a star similar to our Sun. It is now nearing the end of its lifetime and is in the process of ejecting its outer layers to produce the visible nebula. The shedding of the outer layers began about 14,000 years ago. In a few thousand years, the star will have become smaller and hotter, and will begin to release a flood of ultraviolet light into the surrounding nebula; at that time, gas in the nebula will begin to fluoresce, producing what astronomers call a planetary nebula.
At the present time, however, the star is still so cool that atoms in the surrounding gas do not glow, and the surrounding dust particles can only be seen because they are reflecting the starlight from the central star. In addition, there are molecules mixed in with the dust, which emit light in the red portion of the spectrum. Astronomers are not yet certain which types of molecules are producing the red color that is so striking in the Red Rectangle, but suspect that they are hydrocarbons that form in the cool outflow from the central star.
Another remarkable feature of the Red Rectangle, visible only with the superb resolution of the Hubble telescope, is the dark band passing across the central star. This dark band is the shadow of a dense disk of dust that surrounds the star. In fact, the star itself cannot be seen directly, due to the thickness of the dust disk. All we can see is light that streams out perpendicularly to the disk, and then scatters off of dust particles toward our direction. Astronomers found that the star in the center is actually a close pair of stars that orbit each other with a period of about 10 1/2 months. Interactions between these stars have probably caused the ejection of the thick dust disk that obscures our view of the binary. The disk has funneled subsequent outflows in the directions perpendicular to the disk, forming the bizarre bi-conical structure we see as the Red Rectangle. The reasons for the periodic ejections of more gas and dust, which are producing the "rungs" revealed in the Hubble image, remain unknown.
The Red Rectangle was first discovered during a rocket flight in the early 1970s, in which astronomers were searching for strong sources of infrared radiation. This infrared source lies about 2,300 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros. Stars surrounded by clouds of dust are often strong infrared sources because the dust is heated by the starlight and radiates long-wavelength light. Studies of HD 44179 with ground-based telescopes revealed a rectangular shape in the dust surrounding the star in the center, leading to the name Red Rectangle, which was coined in 1973 by astronomers Martin Cohen and Mike Merrill.
This image was made from observations taken on March 17-18, 1999, with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1497/news_release/2004-11
Credit: NASA, ESA, Hans Van Winckel (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium), and Martin Cohen (University of California, Berkeley)
I have an updated version of this image with hydrogen-alpha data added: flic.kr/p/2jfb1hc
The Owl Nebula (in the lower left) is a planetary nebula near the star Merak in Ursa Major. M108 (in the upper right) is a barred spiral galaxy that is viewed nearly edge-on. Together, they fight crime.
I have had previous attempts at this pair. Prior to this, my most recent attempt was from Death Valley in 2015. I used some of that data here, but I also used my new favorite astrophotography move for this one: setup the frame, make sure guiding is good, then go sleep in the car with the heated seats. Always a welcome relief when the night was about 3°C like this one. (Yes, I know other astrophotographers suffer through much colder November nights.) When I awoke from my short winter's -- or, autumn's -- nap, I ran to my scope where photons did splatter! OK, OK, they hit pretty precisely on the elements of an Atik 314L+ color CCD camera. And I guess I didn't exactly run. But I had 16 300s exposures with good tracking I could work with to add to about 30 minutes of data with questionalbe tracking.
This night was so calm. My last data was taken with a pretty steady 5-10 m/s wind blowing. So, after stacking this set, I noticed background galaxies. Like, about 30+ background galaxies. If you want to see which ones, check out the annotated version of the image:
Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with Hyperstar; preprocessing in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, and initial processing in Pixinsight; final touches in PS CS 5.1.
Image center is at (J2000):
RA: 11h 12m 59s
DEC: 55° 21' 22"
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Galaxy Images from NASA's newest James Webb Space Telescope revealed for the first time Cosmic Cliffs, the previously invisible areas of star birth in the Carina Nebula. The rapid phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but James Webb Space Telescope's extreme imaging capability can now capture these fascinating events.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
I felt like doing one of the big, pretty ones this time. I thought this was a proto/preplanetary nebula but it might be better described as a young planetary nebula. I'm not entirely sure. When does a planetary nebula go from being a preplanetary nebula to being a regular planetary nebula? It's kind of like the whole Pluto planet thing. Of course they are all planetary nebulas but where do you draw the line between one type and another? To add to the confusion, the name "protoplanetary" is easily confused with protoplanetary disks. I've been using "preplanetary" because that's less confusing but the inclusion of the word "planetary" is still the root of all confusion.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Look back up at NGC 6302. It's amazing. I definitely recommend looking at the original size. There are some very interesting textures in the clouds. Some areas around the brightest central regions are reminiscent of marbled stone or perhaps eddies and currents in a flowing stream of liquid.
Data use is somewhat complicated to explain, but is roughly as follows:
Stars only, affecting all channels: hst_11504_02_wfc3_uvis_f673n_sci
Red: hst_11504_01_wfc3_uvis_f658n_sci
Green: hst_11504_01_wfc3_uvis_f502n_sci
Blue: hst_11504_02_wfc3_uvis_f469n_sci+hst_11504_02_wfc3_uvis_f373n_sci
North is NOT up. It's 38.9° clockwise from up.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope obtained this image of the strikingly unusual planetary nebula NGC 6751. Glowing in the constellation Aquila like a giant eye, the nebula is a cloud of gas ejected several thousand years ago from the hot star visible in its center.
"Planetary nebulae" are named after their round shapes as seen visually in small telescopes, and have nothing else to do with planets. They are shells of gas thrown off by stars of masses similar to that of our own Sun, when the stars are nearing the ends of their lives. The loss of the outer layers of the star into space exposes the hot stellar core, whose strong ultraviolet radiation then causes the ejected gas to fluoresce as the planetary nebula. Our own Sun is predicted to eject its planetary nebula some 6 billion years from now.
The nebula shows several remarkable and poorly understood features. Blue regions mark the hottest glowing gas, which forms a roughly circular ring around the central stellar remnant. Orange and red show the locations of cooler gas. The cool gas tends to lie in long streamers pointing away from the central star, and in a surrounding, tattered-looking ring at the outer edge of the nebula. The origin of these cooler clouds within the nebula is still uncertain, but the streamers are clear evidence that their shapes are affected by radiation and stellar winds from the hot star at the center. The star's surface temperature is estimated at a scorching 140,000 degrees Celsius (250,000 degrees Fahrenheit).
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/956/news_release/2000-12
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Galaxy Images from NASA's newest James Webb Space Telescope revealed for the first time Cosmic Cliffs, the previously invisible areas of star birth in the Carina Nebula. The rapid phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but James Webb Space Telescope's extreme imaging capability can now capture these fascinating events.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel