NGC7293 Helix Nebula (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Aquarius (Aqr) · Contains: Helix Nebula · NGC 7293

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NGC7293 Helix Nebula

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NGC7293 Helix Nebula

This is my image of the Helix Nebula (catalog NGC 7293), a planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius in our western sky. This is the closest planetary nebula to Earth at a mere 650 light years away and it is only about 10,600 years old. It was given the name "Helix" because some think it looks like an inward descending spiral. However it is also sometimes called "The Eye of God" or "The Eye of Sauron," which I think is more appropriate. It is actually about the size of the full moon from our perspective, but is so faint that you cannot see it with the naked eye. About 40,000 knots of dust are arrayed in a radial pattern around the blue-green core, each about the size of our entire solar system. The pattern of these dust knots looks similar to the spoke-like furrows that form the iris in your eye.

This is my third planetary nebula image following my previous images of the Ring and Dumbbell nebulae. You may recall that these objects get their name from their planet-like round shape as observed by astronomers through early telescopes. Such a nebula is formed when a medium-size star expels ionized gas during the last stages of its life before becoming a white dwarf, which you can clearly see at the center of this nebula.

I made this image from thirty 300-second exposures through my Baader dual-bandpass filter (Hα and OIII) at 2312mm prime focal length, calibrated 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.

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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
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
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	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5171305
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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NGC7293 Helix Nebula

NGC7293 Helix Nebula

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Image Index:

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NGC7293 Helix Nebula

NGC7293 Helix Nebula

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