Helix Nebula - NGC7293 (Julian Shapiro)

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

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Helix Nebula - NGC7293

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Helix Nebula - NGC7293

The Helix Nebula is a large planetary nebula spanning 2.5 light years across in the constellation Aquarius. At a distance of only 650 light years, it's one of the closest to Earth. This makes it one of the brighter planetary nebulae in the sky at a magnitude of 6.6. It was discovered in 1824 by Karl Harding. Planetary nebulae such as the Helix are formed from the death of stars, leaving ring-like structures as well as a white dwarf that can be seen in the very center of the nebula. Each ring is expanding at a rate of 32-40 kilometers per second. The nebula also contains about 40,000 cometary knots, which appear as the thin, small structures pointing towards the center. Each knot is roughly the size of our solar system, and has a mass similar to the Earth. The Helix, like most planetary nebulae, is prominent in hydrogen and oxygen, shown as red and green/blue respectively in this image. The nebula has many prominent outer hydrogen structures, such as the large bowshock on the left. It also contains a unique set of radial rays in oxygen, which can be seen as the green/blue spikes extending outwards.

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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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8884349
PixInsight job	DG25GQZBKDNYA1SRV98JJ2PXKXI72V5C
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	22h29m38s.512
RA (top/left)	22h31m11s.127
RA (top/right)	22h28m05s.973
RA (bottom/right)	22h28m05s.610
RA (bottom/left)	22h31m11s.373

Dec (center)	-20°50′13″.23
Dec (top/left)	-20°37′13″.65
Dec (top/right)	-20°37′11″.17
Dec (bottom/right)	-21°03′10″.17
Dec (bottom/left)	-21°03′11″.99

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Helix Nebula - NGC7293

Helix Nebula - NGC7293

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Helix Nebula - NGC7293

Helix Nebula - NGC7293

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