View allAll Photos Tagged helixnebula
NGC7293 - The Helix Nebula. Very low in the sky for my latitude (not more than 27 degrees), and tons (>8M people) of LP to the south, but I'm pretty satisfied with the overall result, thanks to the Halpha luminance. I also like that the central star color really came out well
Imaging scope: AT8RC
Imaging Camera: ST8300M (capture with Equinox Image)
Filters: Baader HaRGB in FW5-8300 filter wheel
Guide scope: Orion EON 80ED
Guide camera: Starfish Fishcamp (guided with PHD)
Mount: Atlas EQ-G
Calibration in Equinox Image and processing in PixInsight.
HaRGB:
Halpha: 7x5min (2x2)
RGB: 4x1min each (3x3)
Reprocessed and stretched a bit further to show the outer halos of the Helix Nebula in Ha. Imaged from the burbs of Melbourne, Australia on 21 August 2014. Instrument used was a 10" RCOS, AP-900 mount, STL-11000 Mono CCD running at -15 C, Baader Ha filters. 10 X 1500 subs. Processed with CCDStack 2 and Photoshop CS 6.
Helix Nebula - NGC 7293
- Around 4 hours of exposure time in total
- 267 lights ( 60 secs each with a few 30's as well)
- 50 odd flats
- 50 odd darks
- 20 odd bias
- Bortle 7/8 skies
- Sony A6000 with kit 210mm lens on an AZGTI mount.
- Guided with ASI120mm
- Stacked in DSS and then processed in Siril and GIMP
Helix Nebula - From Spitzer telescope
Also known as The Helix or NGC 7293. A large planetary nebula (PN) located in the constellation of Aquarius. Discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding, probably before 1824, this object is one of the closest to the Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae.The estimated distance is about 215 parsecs or 700 light-years. It is similar in appearance to the Ring Nebula, whose size, age, and physical characteristics are similar to the Dumbbell Nebula, varying only in its relative proximity and the appearance from the equatorial viewing angle. The Helix has often been referred to as the Eye of God on the Internet, since about 2003.
www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a...
317007_tumannost_ulitka_4279x3559_(www_GdeFon_ru)
[Second website]
The Nebula Helix or NGC 7293 Category: nebulae - Update February 01, 2013
The Helix Nebula is a cosmic star often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and its resemblance to a gigantic eye. The nebulous discovered in the 18th century, is located about 650 light years in the constellation ofl Aquarium and belongs to a class of objects intended for planetary nebulae.
Planetary nebulae are remnants of stars that seemed in the past to our Sun.
When these stars die, gaseous external drive in space their beds. These beds are heated by the hot core of the dead star, a white dwarf, and glow in the infrared and visible wavelengths. Our Sun will undergo the same evolution when it will die in about five billion years. Infrared light external gaseous beds is represented in blue and green. The white dwarf star is the tiny and white point in the center of the photograph.
This familiar planetary nebula has been well photographed and publicized being called many things along the way. It is the Helix Nebula or NGC 7293.
This photograph of the coil-shaped Helix Nebula is one of the largest and most detailed celestial images ever made. The composite picture is a seamless blend of ultra-sharp images from the Hubble Space Telescope combined with the wide view of the Mosaic Camera on the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz.
The image shows a fine web of filamentary "bicycle-spoke" features embedded in the colorful red and blue ring of gas. At 650 light-years away, the Helix is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth.
Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO).
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/iridescent-glory-of-nearby-...
This colorful image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of two gases near a dying star. Astronomers have dubbed the tadpole-like objects in the upper right corner "cometary knots" because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets. Although astronomers have seen gaseous knots through ground-based telescopes, they have never seen so many in a single nebula.
Hubble captured thousands of these knots from a doomed star in the Helix Nebula, the closest planetary nebula to Earth at 450 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Each gaseous head is at least twice the size of our solar system; each tail stretches 100 billion miles, about 1,000 times the Earth's distance to the Sun. The most visible gaseous fragments lie along the inner edge of the star's ring, trillions of miles from the star at its center. The comet-like tails form a radial pattern around the star like the spokes on a wagon wheel. Astronomers have seen the spoke pattern using ground-based telescopes, but Hubble reveals for the first time the sources of these objects.
Astronomers theorize that the gaseous knots are the results of a collision between gases. The doomed star spews the hot gas from its surface, which collides with the cooler gas that it had ejected 10,000 years before. The crash fragments the smooth cloud surrounding the star into smaller, denser finger-like droplets, like dripping paint. Astronomers expect the gaseous knots, each several billion miles across, to eventually dissipate into the cold blackness of interstellar space.
This image was taken in August 1994 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The red light depicts nitrogen emission; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/406/news_release/1996-13
Credit: NASA, C. Robert O'Dell and Kerry P. Handron (Rice University)
The Helix Nebula is a faint, large planetary nebula. Because of the size of this target, I used the Maksutov Cassegrain to go after this target. This scope is a 127mm aperture f12 design, yielding approximately 1500 mm focal length. As always, I use the full spectrum modified Pentax K10D camera with a peltier cooler.
This is a stack of 37 subs of 10 minutes at 400 ISO taken over the course of 3 nights. Because the target is so low on the southern horizon I have not been able to get a lot of data. Also, there have been challenges of transparency, focus, dew, and tracking.
All this is made more complex by this target being so dim that even at the above-noted sub details, the main ring structure of the nebula was not visible. Only at higher ISO settings or longer exposures does the structure appear. I was not prepared to deal with either step.
These challenges have given a lot of poor subs that I finally found a way to stack without compromising too much of the results.
Each evening's data was calibrated with Maxim as a set. The resutls were debayered and then stacked in Pix Insight. The rest of the processing included some white balance, DBE, ATrous Wavelet, and a lot of stretching. There's a lot of residual background noise. Not much I can do about these without more subs.
While I'd like to get more data, there's a storm coming and it's not likely that I'll get another chance to add more information on this target until next year.
Here's the data on the plate solve:
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
+0.000026298746 -0.000210188757 +0.170099721975
+0.000210359351 +0.000026359299 -0.360611368341
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.763 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 97.159 deg
Focal ............. 1460.00 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 40' 23.0" x 25' 38.0"
Image center ...... RA: 22 29 38.160 Dec: -20 48 21.19
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 22 30 21.938 Dec: -21 09 59.06
top-right ...... RA: 22 30 43.145 Dec: -20 29 53.52
bottom-left .... RA: 22 28 32.909 Dec: -21 06 47.33
bottom-right ... RA: 22 28 54.590 Dec: -20 26 42.64
Subject: NGC7293 -- Helix Nebula
Image FOV: 3 degrees (180 min) by 2.25 degrees (135 min)
Image Scale: 10 arc-second/pixel
Date: 2008/10/03
Exposure: 15 x 10 minutes = 2h30m total exposure, ISO800, f/4.8
Filter: IDAS LPS
Camera: Hutech-modified Canon 30D
Telescope: SV80S 80mm f/6 + TV TRF-2008 0.8X reducer/flattener = 384mm FL, f/4.8
Mount: Astro-Physics AP900
Guiding: ST-402 autoguider and SV66 guidescope. MaximDL autoguiding software using 5-second guide exposures
Processing: Raw conversion and calibration with ImagesPlus (dark frames, bias frames, and flat frames); Aligning and combing with Registar; Levels adjustment, cropping/resizing, JPEG conversion with Photoshop CS. No sharpening or noise reduction.
Remarks: Temperature at start 36F; SQM-L reading 21.22 at start, 21.27 in middle (crescent moonset).
The Helix is a "planetary" nebula - an expanding shell of gas which was ejected from a red giant star nearing the end of its life. The central star is then destined to become a white dwarf.
The Helix lies 700 light years distant within our Milky Way in the constellation of Aquarius.
This image was captured under high desert skies near Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA with a telescope of 12" aperture at f/8 and an electrically-cooled CCD camera.
The tracking was awful, but since it's the first time I've ever photographed this object I thought I'd post it for future comparisons.
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
A quick wide-field shot of the Helix Nebula taken this past October.
Found in the constellation of Aquarius, the Helix is an example of a planetary nebula (i.e. an emission nebula formed by a dying low-to-intermediate size star). Appearing nearly 2/3's the size of the full moon in our sky, it is located approximately 700 light-years away, spans nearly 3 light-years in diameter and is estimated to be about 10,00 years old.
Image Details: Taken by Jay Edwards at the HomCav Observatory on October 17,2017, the attached is stack of several relatively short exposures. Being full-frame this image spans approximately 3 1/2 degrees (i.e. over 6 full moons widths) of our sky from edge-to-edge.
All exposures were taken using an Orion ED80T CF Triplet apochromatic refractor connected to a 0.8x Televue field flattener & focal reducer, CamRanger, IPad and Canon 700D DSLR; and guided by an Orion StarShoot autoguider connected to an Orion 60mm, f/4 guidescope; both riding on an Orion SkyView Pro goto mount guided by PHD2. The image has been resized down here to HD resolution and the bit depth lowered from 16 to 8 bits per channel to reduce the file size.
Old photo that I completely forgot to upload almost two years ago and I found today while trying the new Lightroom 6.
An image of the Helix Nebula, a target we've been wanting to capture for years but only now got the chance to. It is not an easy target because from this location it is very low in the sky and isn't visible for very long. To shoot it from North London means pointing a telescope straight into the glow of London light pollution and taking long exposures while the object disappears behind every tree and building. The subs looked terrible so I was amazed that anything at all came out after stacking. The final image required a lot of processing but I quite like the end result even if it is a bit on the noisy side.
The Helix Nebula (also known as NGC 7293 or Caldwell 63) is a planetary nebula located approximately 655 light years away in the constellation Aquarius. It is one of the closest to the Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae. Planetary nebulae are formed when intermediate to low-mass stars shed their outer layers near the end of their evolution. The remaining central stellar cores become white dwarf stars which cause the previously expelled gases to brightly fluoresce.
016 x 300 second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
054 x dark frames
020 x flat frames
100 x bias frames (subtracted from flat frames)
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 1 hour and 20 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity Lightroom and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI120MC
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Light pollution filter
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Helix Nebula.
Original caption: A newly expanded image of the Helix nebula lends a festive touch to the fourth anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This spectacular object, a dying star unraveling into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike. Spitzer has mapped the expansive outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula, and probed the inner region around the central dead star to reveal what appears to be a planetary system that survived the star's chaotic death throes.
NGC2793 - the Helix Nebula (also known as the Eye of God.)
I originally intended on doing a full S-HOS-O treatment on this but I found nearly no response on the sulphur filter, so I ditched the idea. I'd also like to get that teal colour a bit bluer, as it seems a bit insipid. Meh.
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.
The nebula, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, belongs to a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic butterflies were named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun.
When sun-like stars die, they puff out their outer gaseous layers. These layers are heated by the hot core of the dead star, called a white dwarf, and shine with infrared and visible-light colors. Our own sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
In Spitzer's infrared view of the Helix nebula, the eye looks more like that of a green monster's. Infrared light from the outer gaseous layers is represented in blues and greens. The white dwarf is visible as a tiny white dot in the center of the picture. The red color in the middle of the eye denotes the final layers of gas blown out when the star died.
The brighter red circle in the very center is the glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf (the disk itself is too small to be resolved). This dust, discovered by Spitzer's infrared heat-seeking vision, was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star. Before the star died, its comets and possibly planets would have orbited the star in an orderly fashion. But when the star blew off its outer layers, the icy bodies and outer planets would have been tossed about and into each other, resulting in an ongoing cosmic dust storm. Any inner planets in the system would have burned up or been swallowed as their dying star expanded.
The Helix nebula is one of only a few dead-star systems in which evidence for comet survivors has been found.
This image is made up of data from Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Blue shows infrared light of 3.6 to 4.5 microns; green shows infrared light of 5.8 to 8 microns; and red shows infrared light of 24 microns.
Product pic for a Second Life network vendor system I am working on.
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
The Helix is a very large planetary nebula that has a low surface brightness making it somewhat difficult to see (it wasn't discovered until around 1824). On the morning that I took this photo I was able to see the Helix with a pair of 7x50 binoculars but I was located at a fairly dark site that has much, much better skies than my home town. Aquarius was fairly low in the sky when I took this picture and I only gathered sixteen and one half minutes of image data so I look forward to returning to this object later in the year (needs a dark sky and longer exposure).
Photographed on the morning of June 21, 2012 using an Astro-Tech AT72ED telescope (2.8"/72mm aperture, 430mm prime focal length, f/6) and a Sony NEX-5N digital camera (ISO 3200, a stack of thirty-three images each exposed for 30 seconds, producing a total exposure integration time of 16.5 minutes). Tracking for each of the 30 second exposures was performed by a Celestron CGEM mount (no manual or auto guiding, standard sidereal rate after one star polar align).
Image registration, integration, and adjustments done with PixInsight v01.07.06.0793 with final tweaks in Photoshop CS5.
This image is best viewed against a dark background (press the "L" key to enter the Flickr light box).
All rights reserved.
The Helix nebula, NGC7293, captured using the 431mm T32 at iTelescope's observatory at Siding Spring in Australia. Total of 90x300s or 7.5h RGB. Processing in PixInsight and Lightroom.
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Helix Nebula.
Original caption: A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.
This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius. Also known by the catalog number NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. These stars spend most of their lives turning hydrogen into helium in massive runaway nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. In fact, this process of fusion provides all the light and heat that we get from our sun. Our sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
When the hydrogen fuel for the fusion reaction runs out, the star turns to helium for a fuel source, burning it into an even heavier mix of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Eventually, the helium will also be exhausted, and the star dies, puffing off its outer gaseous layers and leaving behind the tiny, hot, dense core, called a white dwarf. The white dwarf is about the size of Earth, but has a mass very close to that of the original star; in fact, a teaspoon of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a few elephants!
The glow from planetary nebulae is particularly intriguing as it appears surprisingly similar across a broad swath of the spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared. The Helix remains recognizable at any of these wavelengths, but the combination shown here highlights some subtle differences.
The intense ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf heats up the expelled lay
IRON MAN - END OF DAYS... The day the Sun dies... #photomanipulation #gimp #NASA #HelixNebula #anotherplace
The helix nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius.
At a distance of 700 ly, it is approximately 11,000 years old.
Imaged on remote telescope T 30 in Australia.
20 inch Plane wave CDK f/4.5
L RGB 42:21:21:21 minutes.
(also 3X5 minute luminance frames on T 32, 17 " CDK F/6.7)
(So total L RGB 57:21:21:21 minutes)
July 2-9, 2016
CCD: FLI-PL6303E CCD camera
QE: 68% Peak
Seeing conditions average to poor, transparency mostly average.
Pix insight, Lightroom
Dates: Sept. 19, 2022 · Sept. 21, 2022
Integration: 5h 30′
Frames:
Chroma H-alpha 3nm Bandpass 50 mm: 33×300″(2h 45′) bin 1×1
Chroma Lum 50 mm: 30×60″(30′) bin 1×1
Chroma OIII 3nm Bandpass 50 mm: 24×300″(2h) bin 1×1
Chroma SII 3nm Bandpass 50 mm: 3×300″(15′) bin 1×1
Equipment:
Telescope: TEC140
Mount: Astro-Physics 1100GTO
Camera: ASI6200MM
Telescope: Newtonian Astrograph FótonAstro 8" F4
Mount: Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 GT
Camera: ZWO ASI2600mm Pro
Filters: V-Pro Series from Antlia
Guide camera: ZWO ASI120mm Mini
This colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) was created from images obtained using the the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile. The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas. Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.This image was created from images through blue, green and red filters and the total exposure times were 12 minutes, 9 minutes and 7 minutes respectively. This image is available as a mounted image in the ESOshop. #L
Only had time for ONE binned OIII before the mount stopped..
(5x600 seconds Ha from last week.)
So given what I had to work with...I am happy..:)
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.
The nebula, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, belongs to a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic butterflies were named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun.
When sun-like stars die, they puff out their outer gaseous layers. These layers are heated by the hot core of the dead star, called a white dwarf, and shine with infrared and visible-light colors. Our own sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
In Spitzer's infrared view of the Helix nebula, the eye looks more like that of a green monster's. Infrared light from the outer gaseous layers is represented in blues and greens. The white dwarf is visible as a tiny white dot in the center of the picture. The red color in the middle of the eye denotes the final layers of gas blown out when the star died.
The brighter red circle in the very center is the glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf (the disk itself is too small to be resolved). This dust, discovered by Spitzer's infrared heat-seeking vision, was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star. Before the star died, its comets and possibly planets would have orbited the star in an orderly fashion. But when the star blew off its outer layers, the icy bodies and outer planets would have been tossed about and into each other, resulting in an ongoing cosmic dust storm. Any inner planets in the system would have burned up or been swallowed as their dying star expanded.
The Helix nebula is one of only a few dead-star systems in which evidence for comet survivors has been found.
This image is made up of data from Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Blue shows infrared light of 3.6 to 4.5 microns; green shows infrared light of 5.8 to 8 microns; and red shows infrared light of 24 microns.
Integrated flux nebulae are relatively rich in the area. North is at top, and east is to the left.
equipment: Sigma 105mmF1.4 Art and EOS 6D-SP4, modified by Seo-san on ZWO AM5 equatorial mount on the genuine tripod with counter weight 4.8kg, autoguided with Fujinon 1:2.8/75mm C-Mount Lens, ZWO ASI 120MM-mini, and PHD2 Guiding
exposure: 4 times x 900 seconds, 4 x 240 sec, and 4 x 60 seconds at ISO 1,600 and f/3.2
site: 2,434m above sea level at lat. 24 39 52 south and long. 70 16 11 west near Cerro Armazones in Sierra Vicuña Mackenna in Coast Range of Chile
Ambient temperature was around 10 degrees Celsius or 34 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind was mild. Sky was dark, and SQML reached 21.83 at the night.
You are that in which the whole Universe appears. You are One with Me. Love Yourself! - /The Source of All Life/
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Inspired by my science teacher husband! Dichroic glass, gold smalti, glass tile and stained glass on slate, 7" Margaret Almon Mosaics
Image of a nebula taken using a NASA telescope -
Original from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.
The nebula, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, belongs to a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic butterflies were named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun.
When sun-like stars die, they puff out their outer gaseous layers. These layers are heated by the hot core of the dead star, called a white dwarf, and shine with infrared and visible-light colors. Our own sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
In Spitzer's infrared view of the Helix nebula, the eye looks more like that of a green monster's. Infrared light from the outer gaseous layers is represented in blues and greens. The white dwarf is visible as a tiny white dot in the center of the picture. The red color in the middle of the eye denotes the final layers of gas blown out when the star died.
The brighter red circle in the very center is the glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf (the disk itself is too small to be resolved). This dust, discovered by Spitzer's infrared heat-seeking vision, was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star. Before the star died, its comets and possibly planets would have orbited the star in an orderly fashion. But when the star blew off its outer layers, the icy bodies and outer planets would have been tossed about and into each other, resulting in an ongoing cosmic dust storm. Any inner planets in the system would have burned up or been swallowed as their dying star expanded.
The Helix nebula is one of only a few dead-star systems in which evidence for comet survivors has been found.
This image is made up of data from Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Blue shows infrared light of 3.6 to 4.5 microns; green shows infrared light of 5.8 to 8 microns; and red shows infrared light of 24 microns.
️✨ The Helix Nebula – The Eye of the Universe - Starless edition 🌌🔭
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www.instagram.com/ale_motta_astrofotografia
Staring back at us from 650 light-years away, the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is one of the closest and most detailed planetary nebulae ever observed. Often called the "Eye of God", this cosmic wonder is the final breath of a dying star, shedding its outer layers into space and creating this mesmerizing structure.
📍 Constellation: Aquarius ♒
✨ Distance from Earth: ~650 light-years
📏 Size: ~2.5 light-years across
🔭 Apparent Magnitude: +7.6
📡 Coordinates (J2000):
Right Ascension: 22h 29m 38.55s
Declination: -20° 50′ 13.6″
💡 Interesting Facts:
The central white dwarf, the remnant core of the original star, will eventually cool over billions of years.
The nebula’s complex structure is shaped by strong stellar winds and radiation.
It was one of the first planetary nebulae discovered to contain cometary knots, dense clumps of gas each about the size of our solar system!
Despite its ghostly appearance, this nebula is expanding at a rate of 31 km/s!
A cosmic farewell that reminds us of the cyclical nature of the universe. What do you see in this celestial eye? ️✨
Lights: 48x600 (LRGB)
Telescope: Planewave CDK24
Camera: FLI ProLine PL9000
Filters: Astrodon
Processed: Pixinsight
Date: 31/08/2022
Telescòpio: celestron 130 slt(130mm/f5) modificado
Montagem: celestron nexstar slt altazimutal computadorizada
Câmera: Canon sl1 modificada com filtro astrodon ad40 clear
Baader MkIII coma corretor
Filtro astronomik cls ccd eos clip
Deep sky stacker: calibração e integração dos frames/drizzle 2x
Processamento: photoshop cs2, astronomy tools
Exposição total: 40 minutos
08/2015
serra negra- são paulo
A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.
This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius. Also known by the catalog number NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. These stars spend most of their lives turning hydrogen into helium in massive runaway nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. In fact, this process of fusion provides all the light and heat that we get from our sun. Our sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
When the hydrogen fuel for the fusion reaction runs out, the star turns to helium for a fuel source, burning it into an even heavier mix of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Eventually, the helium will also be exhausted, and the star dies, puffing off its outer gaseous layers and leaving behind the tiny, hot, dense core, called a white dwarf. The white dwarf is about the size of Earth, but has a mass very close to that of the original star; in fact, a teaspoon of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a few elephants!
The glow from planetary nebulae is particularly intriguing as it appears surprisingly similar across a broad swath of the spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared. The Helix remains recognizable at any of these wavelengths, but the combination shown here highlights some subtle differences.
The intense ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf heats up the expelled layers of gas, which shine brightly in the infrared. GALEX has picked out the ultraviolet light pouring out of this system, shown throughout the nebula in blue, while Spitzer has snagged the detailed infrared signature of the dust and gas in yellow A portion of the extended field beyond the nebula, which was not observed by Spitzer, is from NASA's all-sky Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The white dwarf star itself is a tiny white pinprick right at the center of the nebula.
The brighter purple circle in the very center is the combined ultraviolet and infrared glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf (the disk itself is too small to be resolved). This dust was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star.
Before the star died, its comets, and possibly planets, would have orbited the star in an orderly fashion. When the star ran out of hydrogen to burn, and blew off its outer layers, the icy bodies and outer planets would have been tossed about and into each other, kicking up an ongoing cosmic dust storm. Any inner planets in the system would have burned up or been swallowed as their dying star expanded.
Infrared data from Spitzer for the central nebula is rendered in green (wavelengths of 3.6 to 4.5 microns) and red (8 to 24 microns), with WISE data covering the outer areas in green (3.4 to 4.5 microns) and red (12 to 22 microns). Ultraviolet data from GALEX appears as blue (0.15 to 2.3 microns).
The ice storm in December 2013 threw frozen rain all over everything, coating hydro wires thickly and dripping down in icy daggers. I took a photo I shot on 22 Dec 2013 and added layers and layers of a texture by Joes Sistah, NASA photos of Saturn's North Polar Storm and the Helix Nebula (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech), and textures of fractured light to express whatever is in my head about today, the 14th anniversary of the crash that gave me a brain injury and altered my paths in this life. You just never know what a seemingly routine day will bring.
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Helix Nebula. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: A newly expanded image of the Helix nebula lends a festive touch to the fourth anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This spectacular object, a dying star unraveling into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike. Spitzer has mapped the expansive outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula, and probed the inner region around the central dead star to reveal what appears to be a planetary system that survived the star's chaotic death throes.
This colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) was created from images obtained using the the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile. The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas. Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.This image was created from images through blue, green and red filters and the total exposure times were 12 minutes, 9 minutes and 7 minutes respectively.
A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.
This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius. Also known by the catalog number NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. These stars spend most of their lives turning hydrogen into helium in massive runaway nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. In fact, this process of fusion provides all the light and heat that we get from our sun. Our sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
When the hydrogen fuel for the fusion reaction runs out, the star turns to helium for a fuel source, burning it into an even heavier mix of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Eventually, the helium will also be exhausted, and the star dies, puffing off its outer gaseous layers and leaving behind the tiny, hot, dense core, called a white dwarf. The white dwarf is about the size of Earth, but has a mass very close to that of the original star; in fact, a teaspoon of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a few elephants!
The glow from planetary nebulae is particularly intriguing as it appears surprisingly similar across a broad swath of the spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared. The Helix remains recognizable at any of these wavelengths, but the combination shown here highlights some subtle differences.
The intense ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf heats up the expelled layers of gas, which shine brightly in the infrared. GALEX has picked out the ultraviolet light pouring out of this system, shown throughout the nebula in blue, while Spitzer has snagged the detailed infrared signature of the dust and gas in yellow A portion of the extended field beyond the nebula, which was not observed by Spitzer, is from NASA's all-sky Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The white dwarf star itself is a tiny white pinprick right at the center of the nebula.
The brighter purple circle in the very center is the combined ultraviolet and infrared glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf (the disk itself is too small to be resolved). This dust was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star.
Before the star died, its comets, and possibly planets, would have orbited the star in an orderly fashion. When the star ran out of hydrogen to burn, and blew off its outer layers, the icy bodies and outer planets would have been tossed about and into each other, kicking up an ongoing cosmic dust storm. Any inner planets in the system would have burned up or been swallowed as their dying star expanded.
Infrared data from Spitzer for the central nebula is rendered in green (wavelengths of 3.6 to 4.5 microns) and red (8 to 24 microns), with WISE data covering the outer areas in green (3.4 to 4.5 microns) and red (12 to 22 microns). Ultraviolet data from GALEX appears as blue (0.15 to 2.3 microns).
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa