| NASA Center: |
Hubble Space Telescope Center |
|---|
| Image # : |
PR00-12 |
|---|
| Date : |
04/06/2000
|
|---|
|
Title
The Glowing Eye of NGC 6751
Full Description
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have obtained images
of the strikingly unusual planetary nebula, NGC 6751. Glowing in the
constellation Aquila like a giant eye, the nebula is a cloud of gas
ejected several thousand years ago from the hot star visible in its
center.
The Hubble observations were obtained in 1998 with the Wide Field and
Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) by a team of astronomers led by Arsen Hajian
of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. The Hubble Heritage
team, working at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore,
has prepared this color rendition by combining the Hajian team's WFPC2
images taken through three different color filters that isolate nebular
gases of different temperatures.
The nebula shows several remarkable and poorly understood features.
Blue regions mark the hottest glowing gas, which forms a roughly
circular ring around the central stellar remnant. Orange and red
show the locations of cooler gas. The cool gas tends to lie in long
streamers pointing away from the central star, and in a surrounding,
tattered-looking ring at the outer edge of the nebula.
The origin of these cooler clouds within the nebula is still uncertain,
but the streamers are clear evidence that their shapes are affected by
radiation and stellar winds from the hot star at the center.
Keywords
Hubble Space Telescope HST NGC 6751 Aquilla Nebula Wide Field Planetary Camera Milky Way Herbig-Haro V380 Orionis Bok WFPC
Subject Category
Deep Space Studies, Hubble,
Reference Numbers
- Center:
HSTI
- Center Number:
PR00-12
- GRIN DataBase Number:
GPN-2000-000891
Source Information
- Creator/Photographer: NASA,
- Original Source: DIGITAL
| Resolution | Format | Width
(Pixels) | Height
(Pixels) | Size
(KBytes) |
Thumbnail |
.jpg |
88 |
95 |
16 |
Small |
.jpg |
626 |
748 |
335 |
Medium |
.jpg |
1467 |
1754 |
1,086 |
Large |
.jpg |
704 |
842 |
453 |
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Updated October 31, 2002
• History Questions: NASA History Office
• Responsible NASA Official: Steve Garber
• Author: Michael Hahn. Editor: Dwayne A. Day
• Curator & Technical Questions: Erin Needham
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