Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 97  ·  NGC 3587  ·  Owl Nebula  ·  PK148+57.1
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M97 - The Owl Nebula, Timothy Martin
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M97 - The Owl Nebula

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M97 - The Owl Nebula, Timothy Martin
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M97 - The Owl Nebula

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Description

This is Messier 97, the Owl Nebula. It's a planetary nebula about 2,000 light years away in the Ursa Major constellation and is about 1.82 light years in diameter. This is another one of those objects that represents the future of our sun. The central star has burned all its hydrogen and expelled its external layers. The resulting white dwarf at the center is now ionizing the expelled gas making it visible to us here on Earth. While this slow-motion death of a star seems tame compared to a supernova, it's still quite a violent event. The outer edge of the gas is moving away from the white dwarf at almost 90,000mph--roughly three times the current speed of the Voyager probes. It would be a very bad day indeed for any spacecraft--or planet--that happened to be in its way.

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