The long goodbye

Esahubble_potw1530a_1024

esahubble_potw1530a July 27th, 2015

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: M. Novak

A dying stars final moments are captured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The death throes of this star may only last mere moments on a cosmological timescale, but this stars demise is still quite lengthy by our standards, lasting tens of thousands of years! The stars agony has culminated in a wonderful planetary nebula known as NGC 6565, a cloud of gas that was ejected from the star after strong stellar winds pushed the stars outer layers away into space. Once enough material was ejected, the stars luminous core was exposed and it began to produce ultraviolet radiation, exciting the surrounding gas to varying degrees and causing it to radiate in an attractive array of colours. These same colours can be seen in the famous and impressive Ring Nebula (heic1310), a prominent example of a nebula like this one. Planetary nebulae are illuminated for around 10 000 years before the central star begins to cool and shrink to become a white dwarf. When this happens, the stars light drastically diminishes and ceases to excite the surrounding gas, so the nebula fades from view. A version of this image was entered into the Hubbles Hidden Treasures basic image competition by contestant Matej Novak.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1530a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
NGC 6565
Subject - Milky Way
Nebula > Type > Planetary
Esahubble_potw1530a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 18h 11m 52.4s
DEC = -28° 10’ 41.0”
Orientation
North is 134.9° CCW
Field of View
0.5 x 0.4 arcminutes
Constellation
Sagittarius

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (H-alpha) 658.0 nm
Orange Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (G) 656.0 nm
Blue Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (V) 555.0 nm
Cyan Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (OIII) 502.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Red
Orange
Blue
Cyan
Esahubble_potw1530a_1280
×
ID
potw1530a
Subject Category
B.4.1.3  
Subject Name
NGC 6565
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: M. Novak
Release Date
2015-07-27T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1530a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
WFPC2, WFPC2, WFPC2, WFPC2
Color Assignment
Red, Orange, Blue, Cyan
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
H-alpha, G, V, OIII
Central Wavelength
658, 656, 555, 502
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
272.96831989, -28.178042339
Reference Dimension
602.0, 440.0
Reference Pixel
301.0, 220.0
Scale
-1.39114546634e-05, 1.39114546634e-05
Rotation
134.87999999999988
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1530a
Metadata Date
2014-10-21T15:07:47+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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