For me, the hardest part of blogging is choosing an image to complement what I am writing. I usually spend way too much time choosing pictures and deciding what I want the image to say. The last entry, about DNA, the Creator/God and the mysteries of the universe, prompted me to think of the Helix Nebula, which is also known as the Eye of God Nebula. I ultimately chose not to use that image, but I just couldn't let it go. I think it deserves it's own post, so it now has a home on my blog.
The Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, is a planetary nebula that is about 450-700 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius. A planetary nebula doesn't have anything to do with planets. They are formed when a red giant star is dying. The outer 'layer', the opaque 'skin', of a star is blown off and that allows radiation to illuminate from the star's core. That UV radiation ionizes the star's 'skin' gases as it radiates outward. It's all about the chemical reactions that stars undergo as they die. What you see could fancifully be called stardust; it is ionized gas from the former star. Timewise, these nebulae are rather short lived, recombining the gases as the core loses energy, creating a white dwarf star in about 10,000 years time. Dust to dust.
2 comments:
I am really impressed by the photo they put out from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field project.
http://www.spaceimages.com/ultradeepfield.html
They took a very small piece of almost dark space and gave the Hubble enough time to get a really good look into it and found 10,000 galaxies.
It is hard to decide which to be more awed by, some of the beauty we get from the photos or how much there is in space. In that little chunk they looked back billions of years and there are 10,000 more galaxies. Galaxies, not just stars and that's a small chunk of space.
So big, so so big.
That is the most hauntingly beautiful thing I've ever seen. I really does look like an eye. Amazing.
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