A gorgeous best-selling design. Click to personalize. How would it look with your name or monogram?
tagged with: star nurseries, star clusters, galaxies, starfields, astronomy, nebulae, helix nebula, hrbstslr helixneb, deep space starfields, outer space, heavens, eso, european southern observatory, vista Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293). It was created from images obtained using the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile.
The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas.
Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.
more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series image code: helixneb
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA
www.eso.org Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
»visit the
HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this