Saturday, December 29, 2007

Helix Nebula

Hairy eyeballs from deep space: An infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a photo fave of amateur astronomers. The nebula, about 700 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, surrounds a tiny white dwarf (dot in center). The red indicates the final layers of gas blown out when the star died.
I don't have all that much to say today, and here is this lovely picture, so I thought I would share it with you.

Photo NASA; text SFGate.com

1 comment:

Laura said...

Ohhh, that is a wonderful picture. James loved learning about Nebulas last year. I will have to show this to him. It looks like a giant eye, lashes and all.