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Submitted: June 30, 2009
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The Eye of God - NGC 7293by ~DoomWillFindYou

Photography / Animals, Plants & Nature / Weather and Sky

NGC 7293, known as the Helix Nebula or the Eye of God due to its distinctive shape, is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to the solar system at a distance of around 700 light years. Planetary nebulae are related not to the birth of stars like most of the nebulae in the sky, but rather their deaths. A star very similar to our sun ran out of fuel and swelled into a red giant as the core was compressed and heated by gravity while a hydrogen shell around the core forced the outer layers to expand. Eventually, the outer layers were moving so quickly that the star's gravity was not able to hold itself together, and a series of rings and shells of gas were thrown off and then ionized by the blazing hot white dwarf (actually blue in this case) star at the center that is all that remained of the original star's core.

Takahashi EM-200, Takahashi TSA-102 at f/6, FLI ML8300, Optec 8nm Ha filter, SBIG ST-2000 XCM (color data). 180 minutes total exposure time.