Sunday, November 29, 2015

the dolphin, sharpless 188: an exercise in faintness

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Sharpless-188 (SH2-188, Simeis 22 or the Dolphin Nebula) is one of the largest planetary nebulae known (9 light year diameter).  Extremely f...
Tuesday, November 10, 2015

NGC 6210 in NII-OIII: Can superturtles fly?

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Here's NGC 6210, the turtle nebula in hercules: This fairly sharp RGB-OIII image from 2007 shows at least two pairs of jets or ansae ...
Sunday, October 25, 2015

planetary nebula primer III, morphology

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Planetary nebula can come in a variety of shapes.  Here are more old images demonstrating morphology.  Although relatively rare, some are ne...
Tuesday, October 20, 2015

astropics: planetary nebula primer II white dwarfs, helium, and diamonds in the sky

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A planetary nebula results from a white dwarf illuminating the gas that was ejected by a dying star... Basically, a ...
Sunday, October 11, 2015

little gem nebula NGC 6818, planetary primer I

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Planetary nebulae are clouds of glowing gas surrounding a “dying” star.  Visually, many are relatively bright grey patches (by deep sky obj...
Wednesday, October 7, 2015

planetary nebula Abell 72

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Abell 72 is a faint planetary nebula It's weak signal is almost all (teal/blue) OIII (doubly ionized oxygen) the blue central star...
Monday, September 28, 2015

super blood moon

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while it was a super moon (moon at closest point to earth in it's orbit during full moon)  and a blood moon (red due to atmospheric r...