View allAll Photos Tagged PlanetaryNebula
A complementary near-far juxtaposition. In the lower left is the relatively nearby ball of glowing gas known as M97 or the Owl Nebula, and at upper right is the much more distant spiral galaxy M108. Other even more distant galaxies appear in the same frame. The stars and the nebula are all in our Milky Way Galaxy a few thousand light-years away while M108, also known as NGC 3556 is at an astounding 32 million light-years away.
80 exposures, 6 minutes each, Explore Scientific ED102 102mm f/7 refractor, ZWO ASI294MC camera, dual narrow-band filter (Hα,[O III]), iOptron CEM25P mount, ASIAir controller. Processed in Astro Pixel Processor and Lightroom.
Wide Field view of M108 and M97 in Ursa Major.
Messier 108 (also known as NGC 3556) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. From the perspective of the Earth, this galaxy is seen almost edge-on. This galaxy is a member of the Ursa Major Cluster of galaxies in the Virgo supercluster. Messier 97 (also known as NGC 3587) ~ The Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula located some 2,030 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Brightest star in this field of view is magnitude 6.62 (HIP54765).
PHOTO DETAILS: photographed on January 3, 2014 and includes 14 x 60 second exposures and 5 x 90 second exposures (total 21.5 minutes). A Canon T4i and Canon EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens at ISO 800 were used. The camera was mounted on a ZEQ25GT mount from iOptron. Photo's were stacked in ImagesPlus and final editing done in Corel PaintshopPro X6 and X5.
At magnitude 8 and less than an arcminute is size, the Saturn Nebula (NGC 7009) is one of the brightest Planetary Nebula in the night sky. And one of the prettiest and most interesting in a small telescope. It is also one of the few Planetary Nebula, I think, that looks better without a nebula filter than with. The central star (a White Dwarf) is easy to spot at magnitude 11.5.
The Saturn nebula gets its name because it reminds one of viewing the planet Saturn when the rings are edge on. The so-called rings appear on the Planetary Nebula as distinct handles (called ansae) even in small telescopes. Be sure to up the magnification since the planetary is small. In fact, when scanning to first locate NGC 7009 under low power look for a slightly-fuzzy, green or blue star – only by adding magnification do the ansae and the Central Star become apparent.
I have over fifty-years of notes and drawings of the Saturn Nebula. Most striking to me when I look through my past observation records is what color I reported. Over the years, distinctly-blue, light-blue, greenish, solid-green and pale-greenish-white are some of my color observations of the Saturn Nebula.
The color can be influenced on many factors including, sky transparency, amount of light pollution, size of telescope, visual genes of the observer, age of observer and possibly even the mood of the observer. Still I am surprised at the wide range of color renditions that I have recorded for the Saturn Nebula over time.
This observation/drawing was done through a 110mm high-quality apo-refractor under reasonably good sky conditions (for Maryland), with 69 year-old-eyes. I saw the Saturn Nebula as greenish.
To see additional astronomy drawings visit: www.orrastrodrawing.com
The round green object near the center of this image is known as the Owl Nebula. It appears to have two large eyes that make it look like the face of an owl. It is a planetary nebula located near the Big Dipper and is approximately 2,030 light-years away.
Planetary nebulae were thought to be planets by early astronomers as they had mostly roundish shapes. We now know them to be expanding glowing shells of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives. Our Sun will become a planetary nebula long after we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
But wait, there's more!
You can also see a galaxy known as the Surfboard Galaxy to the lower left of the Owl. Its official name is Messier 108 and it is located approximately 46 million light-years away.
At the center of the galaxy is a supermassive black hole estimated to be 24 million times as massive as the Sun. The Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered multiple X-ray sources in M108, with the brightest X-ray source suspected to be an intermediately sized black hole that is actively accreting material.
I took this on 4-3-21 at Garland Mountain in Waleska, Georgia.
This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our Sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is the white dot in the center. Our Sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years.
Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae. The objects have nothing to do with planets. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century astronomers named them planetary nebulae because through small telescopes they resembled the disks of the distant planets Uranus and Neptune.
The planetary nebula in this image is called NGC 2440. The white dwarf at the center of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of nearly 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit (200,000 degrees Celsius). The nebula's chaotic structure suggests that the star shed its mass episodically. During each outburst, the star expelled material in a different direction. This can be seen in the two bow tie-shaped lobes. The nebula also is rich in clouds of dust, some of which form long, dark streaks pointing away from the star. NGC 2440 lies about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Puppis.
The image was taken February 6, 2007, with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The colors correspond to material expelled by the star. Blue corresponds to helium, blue-green to oxygen, and red to nitrogen and hydrogen.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/2058/news_release/2007-09
Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI)
Acknowledgment: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope obtained this image of the planetary nebula NGC 6369. This object is known to amateur astronomers as the Little Ghost Nebula, because it appears as a small, ghostly cloud surrounding the faint, dying central star. NGC 6369 lies in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, at a distance estimated to be between about 2,000 and 5,000 light-years from Earth.
When a star with a mass similar to that of our own Sun nears the end of its lifetime, it expands in size to become a red giant. The red-giant stage ends when the star expels its outer layers into space, producing a faintly glowing nebula. Astronomers call such an object a planetary nebula, because its round shape resembles that of a planet when viewed with a small telescope.
The Hubble photograph of NGC 6369, captured with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in February 2002, reveals remarkable details of the ejection process that are not visible from ground-based telescopes because of the blurring produced by Earth's atmosphere.
The remnant stellar core in the center is now sending out a flood of ultraviolet (UV) light into the surrounding gas. The prominent blue-green ring, nearly a light-year in diameter, marks the location where the energetic UV light has stripped electrons off of atoms in the gas. This process is called ionization. In the redder gas at larger distances from the star, where the UV light is less intense, the ionization process is less advanced. Even farther outside the main body of the nebula, one can see fainter wisps of gas that were lost from the star at the beginning of the ejection process.
The color image has been produced by combining WFPC2 pictures taken through filters that isolate light emitted by three different chemical elements with different degrees of ionization. The doughnut-shaped blue-green ring represents light from ionized oxygen atoms that have lost two electrons (blue) and from hydrogen atoms that have lost their single electrons (green). Red marks emission from nitrogen atoms that have lost only one electron.
Our own Sun may eject a similar nebula, but not for another 5 billion years. The gas will expand away from the star at about 15 miles per second, dissipating into interstellar space after some 10,000 years. After that, the remnant stellar ember in the center will gradually cool off for billions of years as a tiny white dwarf star and eventually wink out.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1251/news_release/2002-25
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
This Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 image captures the infancy of the Stingray Nebula (Hen-1357), the youngest known planetary nebula.
A planetary nebula forms after an aging, low-mass star swells to become a "red giant" and blows off some of its outer layers of material. As the nebula expands away from the star, the star's remaining core gets hotter and heats the gas until it glows.
In this image, the bright central star is in the middle of the green ring of gas. A companion star is diagonally above it at 10 o'clock. A spur of gas (green) is forming a faint bridge to the companion star due to gravitational attraction.
The image also shows a ring of gas (green) surrounding the central star, with bubbles of gas to the lower left and upper right of the ring. The wind of material propelled by radiation from the hot central star has created enough pressure to blow open holes in the ends of the bubbles, allowing gas to escape.
The red curved lines represent bright gas that is heated by a "shock" caused when the central star's wind hits the walls of the bubbles.
The nebula is as large as 130 solar systems, but at its distance of 18,000 light-years, it appears only as big as a dime viewed a mile away. The Stingray is located in the direction of the southern constellation Ara (the Altar).
The colors shown are actual colors emitted by nitrogen (red), oxygen (green), and hydrogen (blue). The observations were made in March 1996.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/653/news_release/1998-15
Credit: NASA and Matt Bobrowsky (Orbital Sciences Corporation)
Beautiful Planetary Nebula. The name "Dumbbell" comes from its appearance to the eye at the telescope. The red regions (hydrogen) are the easiest to see which give the dumbbell shape. The greenish blue regions are caused by forbidden transition lines from oxygen gas. The gas itself has been expelled by the "blue" star in the centre that is transforming into a white dwarf, just as our own Sun will one day. This image is a composite of B,V, R Johnson-cousins filters. Data gathered from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) in Victoria, British Columbia with 60 second exposure times.
From Locoal-Mendon (Brittany)
TS-Optics 10" f/4 UNC, HDX110 EQ-G, ZWO ASI2600MC, ST80, SSAG
Acquisition : NINA, PHD Guiding
Processing : PixInsight
Addition of 60 images (60x300s, Gain:100, Offset:1, f/4)
FoV : 43'x29'
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbbell_Nebula
Instagram: @vincent.bchm
M97 - Owl Nebula
Imaged: 18 Feb 2012
Imaging Scope: Celestron CPC800XLT (@ f/6.3)
Imaging Camera: Atik 314L+
Guide camera: StarlightXpress Lodestar
Integration details:
Ha: 9x900s
OIII: 8x1200s
Total integration time: 4hrs 55min
Stacked in Nebulosity, Processed in Photoshop using "Annie's Astro Actions"
I don't do planetary nebulas very often but thinking of doing them a bit more. Gorgeous night out last night and I was able to get a decent amount of data on this, esp in OIII so I could just start to pull out the outer shock wave. Need a few more hours in OIII to get more definition in the shock wave but happy with it for now. Processed as Ha/OIII/OIII and then color balanced as needed
Nikon D80 placed at the focal plane of the eyepiece for the 60" telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory. This is a stack of 7 75s exposures at ISO 1600. Geo was our telescope operator this night. Calibration and initial processing in PixInsight; final processing in PS CS 5.1. I would have thought we could use shorter exposures, but then I remembered we were shooting at about a focal ratio of f/20 - roughly a 30m focal length.
Looking Down a Barrel of Gas at a Doomed Star
The NASA Hubble Space Telescope captured the sharpest view yet of the most famous of all planetary nebulae: the Ring Nebula (M57). In this October 1998 image, the telescope looked down a barrel of gas cast off by a dying star thousands of years ago. This photo reveals elongated dark clumps of material embedded in the gas at the edge of the nebula; the dying central star floating in a blue haze of hot gas. The nebula is about a light-year in diameter and is located some 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.
The colors are approximately true colors. The color image was assembled from three black-and-white photos taken through different color filters with the Hubble telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Blue isolates emission from very hot helium, which is located primarily close to the hot central star. Green represents ionized oxygen, which is located farther from the star. Red shows ionized nitrogen, which is radiated from the coolest gas, located farthest from the star. The gradations of color illustrate how the gas glows because it is bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the remnant central star, whose surface temperature is a white-hot 216,000 degrees Fahrenheit (120,000 degrees Celsius)
Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)
Gases collide near the dying star that produced the Helix Nebula. Astronomers have dubbed the dark, tadpole-like objects in the upper right corner “cometary knots” because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets. Each gaseous head is at least twice the size of our solar system; each tail stretches 100 billion miles, about a thousand times Earth’s distance to the Sun.
Credit: C. Robert O'Dell and Kerry P. Handron (Rice University), NASA
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
NGC 6369
My take on this beauty. This one was very interesting to process because there were 6 different filters, 3 of which were narrow band. Roughly equivalent colors as follows:
Red: IR+NII
Green: 555w+Ha
Blue: 439w+OIII
A little background: Again, I used the usual NASA/Hubble Heritage/STScI image to give me ideas on how to execute my version. While theirs did a very good job of showing all the complex structures of the NII regions, it didn't show the fainter areas of H-a
much at all. It also had a strange but interestingly nacreous color scheme and I'm not entirely sure how it arrived at that. I was very tempted to make the NII regions a more aesthetically pleasing blue or red color instead of the green but then it would be very difficult to tell it from the other narrow band spectra.
Specific data used:
Red
hst_09582_01_wfpc2_f814w_wf_drz
hst_09582_01_wfpc2_f658n_wf_drz
Green
hst_09582_01_wfpc2_f656n_wf_drz
hst_09582_01_wfpc2_f555w_wf_drz
Blue
hst_09582_01_wfpc2_f502n_wf_drz
hst_09582_01_wfpc2_f439w_wf_drz
North is NOT up.
M27 - A dying star
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 arc-minutes, it is easily visible in binoculars, and a popular observing target in amateur telescopes.
The nebula was formed when an evolved, red giant star ejected its outer envelope near the end of its lifetime. The expanding cloud of gas becomes visible once the hot core of the star, visible near the center, is exposed and the high-energy, ultraviolet light from the core ionizes the cloud.
Unmodified Canon 6D DSLR at the Prime Focus of my Home-Built 16 inch Diameter Newtonian Telescope.
ISO 3200, a single 90 second exposure, at my observatories in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Best Regards,
John Chumack
Abell 78 is the colourful remnant of a dying star that has shed its spent hydrogen and helium layers at the end of its life. The outer shell contains large amounts of ionized hydrogen, while the inner shell contains large amounts of helium. This very dim object is located in Cygnus.
I took this image using the equipment at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center, under the guidance of Adam Block.
24" RCOS Carbon Truss f/8
SBIG STL-11000M (self-guided)
Luminance: 150 minutes (15 minute exposures)
RGB: 100:80:80 (10 minute exposures)
Processed with Maxim/DL and Photoshop CS3
Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools
Despite its eerie appearance, Caldwell 90 seems to be a fairly typical planetary nebula. It was discovered by John Herschel on April Fool’s Day in 1834 and later cataloged as NGC 2867. Ironically, he originally thought he may have discovered a new planet. More people than John Herschel have been fooled by the appearance of these nebulae, which is why the term “planetary nebula” was coined in the first place — they often look like planets when viewed with small telescopes.
Caldwell 90 was formed in the late stages of the evolution of a Sun-like star. After having steadily produced energy for several billion years through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core, the star underwent a series of energy crises when its supply of hydrogen began to run low. Without the outward force previously created by the energy production, gravity took over and caused the star’s core to contract. The extra pressure allowed the star to produce a heavier element — carbon — in its core. The synthesis of carbon generated a lot more energy than the fusion of hydrogen into helium, which helped the star to not only overcome gravity to expand once again but led the star to swell up a hundred-fold to become a red giant.
Eventually the red giant’s outer layers of gas were ejected. Meanwhile, the star transformed from a cool giant into a hot, dense star that radiates ultraviolet light and a fast wind of particles that move outward at around 6 million miles per hour. The stellar wind and ultraviolet light interact with the layers of gas that the red giant ejected to create the glowing, spherical shell we see today.
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. Caldwell 90 is located about 6,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Carina and is best viewed in the late summer or early autumn from the Southern Hemisphere, though it can be spotted low in the sky during the late winter or early spring from Northern Hemisphere locations near the equator. It’s so tiny that it will look like a star even in fairly large telescopes, so use high magnification to get the best look. The magnitude-9.7 nebula will resemble a tiny turquoise stone embedded in the night sky.
For more information about Hubble’s observations of Caldwell 90, see:
www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9738c11/
Credit: Howard Bond (STScI) and NASA/ESA
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
2018 data, reprocessed in SIRIL.
Total exposure time: 42 mins
Telescope: Tele Vue-60 APO refractor
Mount: Vixen Super Polaris
M27 is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Vulpecula, one of the brightest in the sky. It is the luminous shell of gas sloughed off by a dying central star.
Takahashi Sky 90 at f/4.5
SBIG STL-4020M (self-guided)
Takahashi EM-200
Hutech LPS Filter
Ha: 3:40 (20 minute subexposures)
Luminance: 1:40 (5 minute subexposures)
RGB: 30 minutes each channel (5 minute subexposures, taken on 2006-06-25)
Processed in Maxim/DL, ImagesPlus, and Photoshop
Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools Actions
Glowing like a multi-faceted jewel, the planetary nebula IC 418 lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lepus. This photograph was obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
A planetary nebula represents the final stage in the evolution of a star similar to our Sun. The star at the center of IC 418 was a red giant a few thousand years ago, but then ejected its outer layers into space to form the nebula, which has now expanded to a diameter of about 0.1 light-year. The stellar remnant at the center is the hot core of the red giant, from which ultraviolet radiation floods out into the surrounding gas, causing it to fluoresce. Over the next several thousand years, the nebula will gradually disperse into space, and then the star will cool and fade away for billions of years as a white dwarf. Our own Sun is expected to undergo a similar fate, but fortunately this will not occur until some 5 billion years from now.
The Hubble image of IC 418 is shown in a false-color representation, based on WFPC2 exposures taken in February and September 1999 through filters that isolate light from various chemical elements. Red shows emission from ionized nitrogen (the coolest gas in the nebula, located furthest from the hot nucleus), green shows emission from hydrogen, and blue traces the emission from ionized oxygen (the hottest gas, closest to the central star). The remarkable textures seen in the nebula were revealed by Hubble, and their origin is still uncertain.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/990/news_release/2000-28
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: Raghvendra Sahai (JPL) and Arsen R. Hajian (USNO)
“SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE -- HUBBLE TELESCOPE REVEALS STELLAR DEATH PROCESS -- This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of planetary nebula NGC 7027 shows remarkable new details of the process by which a star like the Sun dies.
New features include: faint, blue, concentric shells surrounding the nebula; and extensive network of red dust clouds throughout the bright inner region; and the hot central white dwarf, visible as a white dot at the center.
The nebula is a record of the star’s final death throes. Initially the ejection of the star's outer layers, when it was at its red giant stage of evolution, occurred at a low rate and was spherical. The Hubble photo reveals that the initial ejections occurred episodically to produce the concentric shells. This culminated in a vigorous ejection of all of the remaining outer layers, which produced the bright inner regions. At this later stage the ejection was non-spherical, and dense clouds of dust condensed from the ejected material.
When a star like the Sun nears the end of its life, it expands to more than 50 times its original diameter, becoming a red giant star. Then its outer layers are ejected into space, exposing the small, extremely hot core of the star, which cools off to become a white dwarf. Although stars like the Sun can live for up to 10 billion years before becoming a red giant and ejecting a nebula, the actual ejection process takes only a few thousand years.
The NGC 7027 photograph is a composite of two Hubble images, taken in visible and infrared light, and is shown in "pseudo-color.
Credit: H. Bond (STScI) and NASA”
hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1996/05/395-Image.html
Credit: HUBBLESITE website
astroa.physics.metu.edu.tr/Astronom/PN/NGC7027.HTM
Credit: Middle East Technical University/Astrophysics-Physics Department website
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap960117.html
Credit: Astronomy Picture of the Day website
The Helix Nebula (NGC7293) in Aquarius: The Helix Nebula is one of the closest planetary nebula to Earth and one of the largest planetary nebula discovered so far. A planetary nebula is one in which a star has shed off it’s atmosphere during the stellar aging process. This planetary nebula, often called the “Eye of God”, was formed when a dying star (white dwarf) shed its outer atmosphere, which is now expanding out in a large ring at a rate of 25 km per second. The central white drawf star is releasing so much energy that it is lighting up this entire nebula. As the star cools, the nebula will fade away from view. Our Sun is expected to do the same in about 5 billion years.
This is a single 30 minute exposure using conventional slide film. I used an old Olympus OM1 35mm film camera attached to a Meade LXD75 8" Schmidt Newtonian Telescope for focal length of 812mm at f/4. While the mount automatically tracked the object, I hand guided corrections (to fix tracking errors) using another telescope (Orion guidescope) attached to the main scope. Total cost of this setup was under $1,700 U.S. For details on how you can capture the universe in brilliant color visit my website at Petes Astrophotography
To buy prints and other gifts using this photograph please visit Cosmic Colors
One of the most famous and easily spotted planetary nebulae, the Ring is in the constellation Lyra and passes very close to the zenith from my latitude. This was shot from my very light polluted backyard.
Stack of 22 185s guided sub-frames taken with a Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/10 with an Atik 314L+ color CCD and light pollution filter. Initial processing and stacking in Nebulosity; final processing in PixInsight and PS CS 5.1.
An infrared, pseudogreen, red light view of a beautifully symmetrical bipolar preplanetary nebula (are we just calling these 'young' planetary nebulas now?). The blue appearance is due to the filters used. Note the blue outflows are glowing, ionized gas, not dust. There is a very faint but curious stray bit of gas pointing directly back to the central star down and to the left of the nebula.
Thumbnails in the HLA are of awful quality and obviously created with some error but the actual data (acquired through DADS) is very nice looking.
This object was also imaged for proposal 10536.
Red: ACS/WFC F814W
Green: Pseudo
Blue: ACS/WFC F606W
North is NOT up. It is 9.77° counter-clockwise from up.
Toss this one in the pile of astronomical things which look like eyes. At first glance this closely resembles someone's iris. After closer inspection we are forced to realize it's really a bunch of glowing gas.
Red: hst_08773_03_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_07501_03_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_08773_03_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
North is NOT up, it's 35.8° clockwise from up
This Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula, reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. 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. According to one theory on the formation of planetary nebulae, 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.
Credit: Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, and NASA
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-pia14442/
A planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius, approximately 700 light years from earth. Planetary nebulae are the remains of modestly sized stars, similar to our sun, which, having expended their nuclear fuel shed mass and collapse to white dwarfs. The Helix Nebula, because it is relatively close to earth--compared to other planetary nebula--appears very large, approximately one half the diameter of the full moon. This image was created at the General Nathan Twinning Observatory (GNTO), the dark sky site of The Albuquerque Astronomy Society (TAAS) with a Celestron C-11 HD w/ focal reducer operating at 1960 mm f.l. and f/7, an SBIG ST4000XCM camera and a Losmandy G11 mount. Fifteen x 10 minute subs were created at -10 C, along with darks and flats. Processing was done in DSS and PS CS2. You can purchase a print of this image at: alan-ley.artistwebsites.com/ Thanks for looking!
On 2018-11-10, the periodic comet 38P/Stephan-Oterma was at its closest point to the Sun on this orbit. The comet has an orbital period of about 38 years, so it will be a while before it gets this close again. It also only gets about as close to the Sun as the orbit of Mars, so it is still quite a way out there.
Because of this distance, it doesn't develop much of a tail, nor does it reach naked eye visibility. In these frames, it passes slowly through part of the constellation Gemini near NGC 2392 -- a planetary nebula known as either the Clown Face Nebula or the Eskimo Nebula.
This is a stack of 22 frames taken from roughly 0905 UT to 0950 UT on that night. Skies were excellent in Joshua Tree, CA. All images were shot with an Atik 314L+ color CCD attached to a Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with Hyperstar. Initial processing in Nebulosity; frame alignment and processing in Pixinsight; frames were finished and assembled into this animation in PS CS 5.1.
This is the 100th planetary nebula I have processed! Woo hoo. Lots of strange and interesting structures in this one. The dust lane looks like it's corkscrew-shaped but I might be imagining that.
I used some WFC3/UVIS data for the nebula itself and some older WF/PC to finish off the corners to expand the star field so the composition wasn't so closely cramped around the nebula.
Red: hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f814w_sci + hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f658n_sci
Green: hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f656n_sci + hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f555w_sci
Blue: hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f555w_sci
Outer corners only:
Red: hst_06364_01_wfpc2_f814w_pc_sci + hst_06347_25_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_07285_06_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci + hst_06364_01_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_06364_01_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
North is up.
My 2011 version for this DSO. Nice round stars here compared to last years attempt! :)
Taken in Western MA on 6/3/2011
Telescope used and reducer: AT8RC w/ Astro-Tech Field Flattener
Huetech IDAS LPS-P2-48 Light Pollution Suppression Filter
Mount Used: Losmandy G11
Camera Used: Canon 450d (modded)
ISO/Exposure: 1600
16 x 240 seconds (64 minutes)
Stacked in DSS with Flats, Darks and Bias
Post Process in PS CS5
Taken 6/4/2011
Caldwell 69 is an example of one of the more spectacular Hubble Space Telescope images of Caldwell Catalog objects. In 2020, the Hubble Space Telescope was retrained on Caldwell 69, also known as NGC 6302, or the "Butterfly Nebula," to observe it across a more complete spectrum of light, from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared, helping researchers better understand the mechanics at work in its technicolor "wings" of gas. The observations highlight a new pattern of near-infrared emission from singly ionized iron, which traces an S shape from lower left to upper right. This iron emission likely traces the central star systems most recent ejections of gas, which are moving at much faster speeds than the previously expelled mass.
The star or stars at its center are responsible for the nebula's appearance. In their death throes, they have cast off layers of gas periodically over the past couple thousand years. The "wings" of NGC 6302 are regions of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit that are tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour.
NGC 6302 lies between 2,500 and 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/ngc-6302-the-butterfly-nebula/
A planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, approximately 1360 light years from earth. Planetary nebulae are the remains of modestly sized stars, similar to our sun, which, having expended their nuclear fuel, shed mass and collapse to white dwarfs.
Data was obtained with a C11-HD and focal reducer, operating at f/7 and 2000 mm. The camera was an SBIG ST4000XCM camera, with an IDLH LP2 light pollution filter and the mount was a Losmandy G11. 25 x 10 min integrations, processed with DSS and Photoshop CS2. Image cropped for aesthetics. A very good night in Albuquerque. Once in a row!
You can purchase prints of my images at:
Somehow I ended up looking at this version of NGC 6826 in which the red channel was badly blown out and I also wondered if I could pick and arrange the different filters available to not end up with a lime green nebula. Yet another version, done for Chandra so we can see the x-rays emitting from the nebula, seemed awfully grainy and had a sharpening halo around the center of the nebula.
Inspired by these two, I have created my own version. Also, since the data was readily available, I did my own x-ray version too.
Red: hst_11122_14_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_08390_07_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_11122_14_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
North is up.
Messier 26 open star cluster, at right, a bright binocular/telescopic star cluster, along with the fainter and small globular star cluster NGC 6712 at upper left, which itself is paired with the faint planetary nebula IC 1295, the greenish spot left of NGC 6712. All are in the constellation of Scutum, embedded in the rich Scutum Starcloud. The bright red star at top is S Scuti.
This is a stack of 8 x 6 minute exposures at f/4.4 with the Canon 6D at ISO 800 and TMB 92mm Apo refractor with the Borg 0.85x flattener/reducer. Taken from the winter home near Silver City, New Mexico.
This image, taken by my old friend Trravis Rector, shows the Soap Bubble Nebula, a planetary nebula formed bya dying star.
Credit: T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF
Original (and you want to see the orignal!): www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im1059.html
Famous planetary nebula in Vulpecula.
Stack of five 30 second frames at ISO 6400 with dark frame subtraction.
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
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
You think you know someone and then you look at them in infrared and then wonder what else they aren't showing you. Seriously, I have seen this picture of the same object at least a dozen times in the past so I didn't expect anything out of the ordinary when I looked at the data in the archive. But there are a whole bunch of infrared observations where these weird, geometric arcs or ovals show up! Fascinating. Note they are a bit blurry as data from NICMOS tends to be. Sometimes I wonder if all the processing I do to its data is right or not but there really are some interesting things there even though it's so messy.
Upon further inspection of the nebula I get a good sense of its dimensionality and to me it appears that we are looking down at an hourglass from a 45° angle or so. I think this is why processing is so addictive. I stare at things for a long time and come away with a much better understanding than I previously had and maybe even some extra information that wasn't in a press release at some point.
Oh, I got rid of the large, distracting diffraction spikes as best I could while doing the least harm to the object that I could manage.
Red: HST_11331_03_NIC_NIC3_F160W_sci + hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f675w_pc_sci + hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci + hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci + hst_06353_08_wfpc2_f487n_pc_sci
North is up.
M57 The Ring Nebula, A Cheerio in Space, Dying Star, Planetary Nebula
QHY5IIL CCD camera & 8" SCT Scope
12 minute exposure
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 - 41 x 20 min exposures
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 star in the geometric centre at Mag 19.8 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 Hubble Space Telescope image of the spiral planetary nebula (which is very strange) IRAS 23166+1655.
Original caption: This remarkable picture from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows one of the most perfect geometrical forms created in space. It captures the formation of an unusual pre-planetary nebula, known as IRAS 23166+1655, around the star LL Pegasi (also known as AFGL 3068) in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse). The striking picture shows what appears to be a thin spiral pattern of astonishingly regularity winding around the star, which is itself hidden behind thick dust. The spiral pattern suggests a regular periodic origin for the nebula’s shape. The material forming the spiral is moving outwards a speed of about 50 000 km/hour and, by combining this speed with the distance between layers, astronomers calculate that the shells are each separated by about 800 years.The spiral is thought to arise because LL Pegasi is a binary system, with the star that is losing material and a companion star orbiting each other. The spacing between layers in the spiral is expected to directly reflect the orbital period of the binary, which is indeed estimated to be also about 800 years.The creation and shaping of planetary nebulae is an exciting area of stellar evolution. Stars with masses from about half that of the Sun up to about eight times that of the Sun do not explode as supernovae at the ends of their lives. Instead a more regal end awaits them as their outer layers of gas are shed and drift into space, creating striking and intricate structures that to Earth-bound observers often look like dramatic watercolour paintings. IRAS 23166+1655 is just starting this process and the central star has yet to emerge from the cocoon of enveloping dust.This picture was created from images from the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys on Hubble. Images through a yellow filter (F606W, coloured blue) were combined with images through a near-infra red filter (F804W, coloured red). The exposure times were 11 minutes and 22 minutes respectively and the field of view spans about 80 arcseconds.Links Paper discussing the intriguing AFGL 3068 (PDF format)
A smaller but pretty cool nebula. Looks a lot like a goat's eye to me. I was a little surprised to find this. It's definitely a hidden treasure.
Red: hst_11185_10_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_11185_10_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci
Blue: hst_11185_10_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
All channels, stars only (white): hst_11185_10_wfpc2_f588n_pc_sci
North is NOT up. It is 27° counter-clockwise from up.
Sh2-91 - The other veil nebula in Cygnus.
Campbell's Hydrogen Star - a planetary nebula (with the WC Wolf-Rayet star HD184738 at its centre) - the red "star" above left of centre.
Imaged at the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh's Remote Observatory (ASERO) in Trevinca, Spain on 2024-08-27/28
Equipment:
95mm f4.4 EDPH APO
TS-Optics 94 mm f/4.4 (flattener /reducer) triplet Apo Refractor
TS-Optics ToupTek Color Astro Camera 2600CP
L-eNhance filter
58x300s exposure.
Captured in NINA.
Stack by the ASERO team.
Processed with GraXpert, Siril, Gimp and AstroSharp.
NGC6164-65 is a Planetary nebula in the southern constellation Norma, around 4200 light years from us.
An interesting and unusual extra to NGC6188, a very large and interesting nebula centered in Ara beyond the top of this frame.
When this dual-lobed planetary nebula was discovered in 1854 by John Herschel, the two outer lobes did not appear connected, so each was cataloged individually.
NGC 2346 is another nebula of lepidopteran persuasion. Several nebulas are referred to as butterfly nebulas for their symmetry and structures which appear like spread wings of said insects. Maybe we should pick one to designate as Moth Nebula to help add some variety. I'm sure we could throw in some dragonflies and other insects as well. On that note, a recent discussion at Starship Asterisk caused me to realize planetary nebulas are likened to bugs in many ways.
This nebula almost perfectly fit on the WFPC2 chips. Some dim parts were cut off at the edges but that's it. I especially like how the PC chip fits unobtrusively into the square corner on the upper central side of the nebula.
Red: hst_07129_05_wfpc2_f658n_wf_sci
Green: hst_07129_05_wfpc2_f656n_wf_sci
Blue: hst_07129_05_wfpc2_f502n_wf_sci
North is NOT up. It's 38° clockwise from up.
It's easy to see why this bipolar nebula is called the Retina Nebula. It is one of the most detailed in the archive. Because it's so close, fine details which might otherwise be lost are visible.
The reticulated pattern of dust, which appears to form a toroidal shape around the star puzzles me since it is not quite like anything else. There are dust structures in other bipolar nebulas, just not quite like this. They remind me of NGC 7027 but with finer structure and not in the form of dual rings. The NGC 7027 image has the advantage of near infrared data from NICMOS, which makes it much easier to see its dust structures. Knowing that makes me wonder what an Infrared image might reveal in IC 4406.
Also visible is a faint arc above the core which is also present below but less well defined. I didn't notice it in many other images of this nebula because it's so faint and easily lost to the background.
Both pc and wf data was combined from two different years (2001 & 2002).
Red: f658n
Green: f656n
Blue: f502n
North is up.
Here's another one of those rainbow colored nebulas, aptly named the Spirograph Nebula.
Red: hst_08773_10_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_06353_09_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci
Blue: hst_08773_10_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
North is up.