M97 / Owl Nebula (Jan Beránek)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: HD97302 · M 97 · NGC 3587 · Owl Nebula · PK148+57.1

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M97 / Owl Nebula

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M97 / Owl Nebula

The Owl Nebula (M97) is a remarkable planetary nebula in the constellation of Big Bear.

It was formed about 8,000 years ago, when a star ejected its outer layers during a violent event. These gases are now expanding into the space, creating a kind of bubble, or a shell, around the remainder of the central star.

Following this outburst, this star now has only about half of mass of our Sun, but is very hot - its surface has over 100,000 °C. It is its intense radiation that causes the gases around it to glow, by ionizing them.

The photo indicates that in particular the hydrogen (glowing in red color) and oxygen (turquoise color) gases are dominating the nebula. You can also spot the central star as a small dot in its center.

When a planetary nebulae are formed, their progenitor stars usually eject their material in two opposing directions, making them appear symmetrical.
In the case of Owl Nebula, the two ejection streams are nearly aligned with our line of sight. The dust that they contain causes two darker spots in it, which somehow resemble owl's eyes. One of these two spots appear a bit darker - this is because it's dust is part of the ejection stream directed towards us.

Owl Nebula's distance from Earth is 2,000 light years. It will gradually disappear in the course of several thousand years, the gases will expand further and the central star will cool down during its final stage of life.

Fun fact: It is expected that our Sun, too, will form a planetary nebula at the end of its active live some five billion years from now.

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Messier catalogue
Planetary Nebulae

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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Distribution of data sources

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Professional, scientific grade data
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Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9558107
PixInsight job	DNIZRS9N2E0T2NS1QDGHB14XGI6M78HI
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	11h14m50s.862
RA (top/left)	11h15m47s.947
RA (top/right)	11h11m54s.766
RA (bottom/right)	11h13m54s.879
RA (bottom/left)	11h17m47s.184

Dec (center)	+55°01′03″.30
Dec (top/left)	+55°25′05″.37
Dec (top/right)	+54°58′28″.33
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°37′00″.95
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°03′21″.88

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M97 / Owl Nebula

M97 / Owl Nebula

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M97 / Owl Nebula

M97 / Owl Nebula

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