The Mote in God’s Eye

Are the Moties coming out…?

NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula 
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Explanation: It’s the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula. Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, the glowing gas originated in the outer layers of a star like our Sun. In this representative color picture, the hot blue pool of light seen surrounding this binary system is energized by the hot surface of the faint star. Although photographed to explore unusual symmetries, it’s the asymmetries that help make this planetary nebula so intriguing. Neither the unusual shape of the surrounding cooler shell nor the structure and placements of the cool filamentary dust lanes running across NGC 3132 are well understood.

Original.

10 thoughts on “The Mote in God’s Eye”

  1. I love this picture, I remember posting a copy of it years ago (in another galaxy I think ;))

    It’s the sheer mind boggling size of it that gets me, I’ll let someone else explain…

    “A notable feature of the Helix Nebula are the “small blobs, known as ‘cometary knots'” boasting “faint tails extending away from the central star” which can be seen around the nebula’s blue “iris” (easier to spot in the bigger image here).

    ESO explains: “Although they look tiny, each knot is about as large as our Solar System.”

    Each knot is the size of our Solar System! Good grief.

    Click here for source

  2. Hello Soutie: They are different objects, yours is the Helix, Bravo’s is the Southern Ring, but both are beautiful and equally vast. “There is nothing new beneath the sun perhaps?’

    Hello Bravo:

    How about “A Thorn in God’s Nose” from the same source (Hubble).

  5. The reference was to a book. Guess there aren’t too many readers of SF on the chariot. 🙂

    That is an amazing pic, LW.

Add your Comment