The bubble nebula Abell 39. Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
In theory, planetary nebulae should be simple and spherical, like the soap bubbles you made as a child. But only a rare few actually are! Here’s an example of one of the almost perfectly round planetary nebulae.
“Abell 39 is the quintessential bubble nebula with spherical form,” writes Adam Block, who is an avid astrophotographer, as well as the Public Observing Programs Coordinator at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center in Tucson, Arizona. “As this is a ‘true color”‘(broadband) image, it is difficult to show the limb brightening and the variations in the transparent shell like narrowband images do. I am glad to finally have this one in the collection of recent work.”
See more information about this image at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center’s website
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
The current exoplanet census contains 5,832 confirmed candidates, with more than 7,500 still awaiting confirmation.…
Is it possible to understand the Universe without understanding the largest structures that reside in…
Asteroid sampling missions are getting increasingly complex. Recent announcements about the existence of amino acids…
What happens when one galaxy shoots a bigger galaxy right through the heart? Like a…
The ESA's Gaia mission mapped the positions and velocities of stars with extreme precision by…
At first glance the large scale structure of the Universe may seem to be a…