Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Andromeda (And)  ·  Contains:  Copeland's Blue Snowball  ·  NGC 7662
NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula, Joe Niemeyer
NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula
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NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula

NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula, Joe Niemeyer
NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula

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Description

This tiny blue smudge is called the Blue Snowball Nebula (cataloged as NGC 7662). It is located 2,000 to 4,000 light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. At a span of only 30 arc seconds, it looks like a fuzzy blue star even at high magnification. Detail is resolved only through cropping and careful post processing. The central star of this planetary nebula is 1,000 times brighter than our Sun. Like all planetary nebula, this object is formed at the end of life of an intermediate size star of between 1 and 8 solar masses. After the star fused most of its hydrogen into helium, it became a red giant which then dissipated its gases leaving an incredibly dense white dwarf star within a shell of ionized gases. The white dwarf emits intense ultraviolet radiation resulting, in this case, the beautiful blue shell shown in this image. In less spectacular fashion than supernovae, the heavier elements (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) in these nebulae are gradually dispersed into the galaxy ending up in planets like our dear old Earth. I love imaging these planetary nebulae because no two are the same in terms of color and shape. They are part of the diversity and wonder of our galaxy and of the entire universe.

This image is formed from fifty-three 180-second exposures shot through my Baader Neodymium Skyglow filter at 2312mm focal length. I then calibrated the light frames with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames. I stacked the frames with Astro Pixel Processor and post-processed with Photoshop utilizing the StarXTerminator, Astronomy Tools, and Topaz DeNoise AI plugins. This image is heavily cropped due to the extremely small size of this nebula.

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NGC7662 Blue Snowball Nebula, Joe Niemeyer