alienation news

Eye-catching celestial helix images unveiled

Astronomers have unveiled images of one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth one of the largest and most detailed celestial images ever. The images show a fine web of filamentary 'bicycle-spoke' features embedded in colourful red and blue gas ring.
Hubble astronomers took several exposures then combined the views with a wider photo taken by Kitt Peak's Mosaic Camera.
The result is a breathtaking look down a tunnel of glowing gases that is a million million kilometres long. The fluorescing tube is pointed nearly directly at Earth, so it looks more like a bubble than a cylinder. Thousands of comet-like filaments embedded along the inner rim of the nebula point back toward the central star, which is a small but superhot white dwarf. These tentacles formed when a hot stellar 'wind' of gas ploughed into colder shells of dust and gas previously ejected by the doomed star. Astronomers have known about these comet-like filaments from ground-based telescopes for decades but have never before seen them in so much detail. The filaments may lie in a disc around the hot star, like a collar.