The Strange Structures of the Saturn Nebula
The Saturn Nebula is located approximately 5000 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius (The Water Bearer). Its name derives from its odd shape, which resembles everyone’s favourite ringed planet seen edge-on.
The spectacular planetary nebula NGC 7009, or the Saturn Nebula, emerges from the darkness like a series of oddly-shaped bubbles, lit up in glorious pinks and blues. This colourful image was captured by the powerful MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), as part of a study which mapped the dust inside a planetary nebula for the first time. This annotated version labels the features of this curious object.
Credit: ESO/J. Walsh
The spectacular planetary nebula NGC 7009, or the Saturn Nebula, emerges from the darkness like a series of oddly-shaped bubbles, lit up in glorious pinks and blues. This colourful image was captured by the powerful MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), as part of a study which mapped the dust inside a planetary nebula for the first time.
This view shows how the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope gives a three-dimensional depiction of the Saturn Nebula. For each part of this spectacular nebula, the light has been split up into its component colours — revealing in detail the chemical and physical properties of each pixel. During the subsequent analysis the astronomer can move through the data and study different views of the object at different wavelengths, just like tuning a television to different channels at different frequencies.
Credit: ESO/J. Walsh
This visualisation shows the three-dimensional MUSE data on the bright planetary nebula NGC 7009, also known as the Saturn Nebula. Each slice is presented in sequence shows a view of the object at a different wavelength. At certain wavelengths, corresponding to emission lines in the spectrum from hydrogen, oxygen and helium, the object glows brightly and strange structures are revealed. At the end these emission line views are combined to make a colour picture of the object.
Credit: ESO/J. Walsh/L.Calçada
Mapping the gas and dust structures within planetary nebulae will aid in understanding their role in the lives and deaths of low mass stars, and it will also help astronomers understand how planetary nebulae acquire their strange and complex shapes.
This zoom sequence starts from a very broad view of the sky and heads towards the constellation of Aquarius (The Water Bearer). After a while we see a bright tiny blue disc, which eventually turns into the spectacular planetary nebula NGC 7009, known as the Saturn Nebula because of its distinctive shape. The final image is from new data taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org). Music: Astral Electronic
But MUSE’s capabilities extend far beyond planetary nebulae. This sensitive instrument can also study the formation of stars and galaxies in the early Universe, as well as map the dark matter distribution in galaxy clusters in the nearby Universe. MUSE has also created the first 3D map of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (eso1518) and imaged a spectacular cosmic crash in a nearby galaxy (eso1437).
Notes
[1] Planetary nebulae are generally short-lived; the Saturn Nebula will last only a few tens of thousands of years before expanding and cooling to such an extent that it becomes invisible to us. The central star will then fade as it becomes a hot white dwarf.
[2] The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has previously provided a spectacular image of the Saturn Nebula — but, unlike MUSE, it cannot reveal the spectrum at each point over the whole nebula.
Contacts and sources:
Richard Hook
ESO
Source:
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