ETHOS 1 (PN G068.1 + 11.0) is a recently discovered bipolar planetary nebula, located in the constellation of Lyra at a declination of +36 degrees. The central PN spans 20 arc-seconds in our apparent view, less than one-half the current apparent diameter of Jupiter. The entire nebula spans about 1 arc-minute.
This PN was discovered by a team of astronomers on March 10, 2009. It is the first discovery of the ETHOS effort (Extremely Turquoise Halo Object Survey). The survey extends the MASH-II catalogue search of the sky to broadband colors.
The
discovery paper states that the 2 basic components of this PN are a spherical outflow and a nested thin-walled bipolar outflow. This is shown in the schematic seen on the mouseover image. The sphere is typical for a PN, but the bipolar jets in this case are more visual and dramatic than usual. The 2 bi-polar jet extensions are my favorite part of the image. At their very ends, they can be seen slightly curving away from each other in the typical point symmetric manner. Other PNe with point symmetric jets can be seen my
Point Symmetric Jets Collection.
The progenitor star is a binary star, which is common for PNe. The star is seen in my image. Typically we cannot see the binary nature of these binary stars due to their close separation, and I am sure that is the case here as well, although my imagination seems to conjure up two of them here.
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