This object is a planetary nebula located 4000 light years away in the constellation of Puppis at a declination of -18 degrees. This magnitude 9 PN spans 1.3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 2 light years.
Astronomers have marveled about this object for over hundreds of years since its discovery by William Herschel on March 4, 1790. The famous astronomer Rudolf Minkowski, when first seeing this object in the 200 inch reflector on Mount Palomar, said that is “an object so complicated it defies description”. The famous PN expert Sun Kwok (author of the excellent Cosmic Butterflies book) says that this object is the best example of
multipolar structure in a PN.
The gas patterns here are complex with multiple lobes, likely because of multiple bi-polar expulsion periods, changing bi-polar directionality, and different gas velocities.
As is commonly seen for PN, hydrogen is more prominent along the leading edges, while oxygen dominates the inner regions.
The central star is impossible to see in my image – the PN is just too bright.
Unfortunately, there is a dark side to this poor object. It has been saddled with some of the worst nicknames known to DSOs. These include the Kiss Nebula, the Little Lips Nebula, and the Albino Butterfly. This object is too bizarre and beautiful to have such mundane nicknames.
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