Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Aquarius (Aqr)  ·  Contains:  Helix nebula  ·  NGC 7293
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Helix nebula - NGC7293, Giulio Ercolani
Helix nebula - NGC7293
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Helix nebula - NGC7293

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Helix nebula - NGC7293, Giulio Ercolani
Helix nebula - NGC7293
Powered byPixInsight

Helix nebula - NGC7293

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In about 5 billions of years, humankind should be somewhere in our galaxy, colonizing thousands on earth-like planets... Should be curious to think about an amatorial observer of the sky, that from one of this planet at 700 light years from Solar System will point his telescope to our Sun. It could observe something like in this picture, our Sun transformed in a little white dwarf star surrounded by an amazing firework of gas!

This kind of nebula represents the final stage of Sun-like stars and they are called Planetary Nebulas due to they shape and appearance in the telescope vision. The cas is emitted during the end of red giant phase of star evolution and it becomes bright when the central star becomes very hot in the final collapse to the white dwarf stage. Its temperature in that moment reaches 20000-30000 Kelvin, and its Ultra Violet emission excites the expanding bubble of gases, making it visible with unbelivable colours, fluorescent in a different one for each atoms.

In this picture, taken with my C11 telescope from the Atacama Desert togeter with Giulio Ercolani you could observe maybe the closest of this kind of object, the amazing Helix Nebula or NGC7293 in the Aquarius Constellation. The diameter of this expanding bubble of gases is about 2.5 light years and it is dissolving in the cosmos, mixing its gases to the ones of our galaxy, for a future generations of stars!

With Alessandro Schillaci in the Atacama desert

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    Helix nebula - NGC7293, Giulio Ercolani
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    Helix nebula - NGC7293, Giulio Ercolani
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Helix nebula - NGC7293, Giulio Ercolani