Post
by Ann » Tue Jun 15, 2010 3:01 am
NGC 5746 is a nice-looking galaxy, to be sure. It has a very nice and striking shape. But to me it is a boring galaxy, because it is all monocolored: it is all yellow through and through, because its brown dustlane can be considered just another form of yellow, though a darkened one. There is no star formation in NGC 5746, so there are no young blue custers, no pink emission nebulae, no flamboyant supergiants of various colors and no deep red carbon stars. How boring.
For me, who tend not to like planetary nebulae because I don't trust myself to understand what color they are (and I hate not knowing that!!!), it was surprising to find that I actually prefer the planetary nebulae over the other pictures here. That's a really good and very three-dimensional image of the Helix, I must say. I also like the colorful and probably true-color image of NGC 6781, where the rich starry background displays stars of many colors, and where there is a very orange star next to the very blue white dwarf powering the nebula, and where the red hydrogen shell of the nebula is perfectly round in places and broken up in layers of arcs in other places, inviting speculation on what kind of forces shaped a nebula like this one. Like our Inadvertant Bot Sire (I love that title!) I, too, admire the perfect circular symmetry of Abell 39. It's certainly like a soap bubble in space. I love the intensely blue color of the central star and I like the blue color of the bubble, but I fear that that color of the bubble is faked. I just wish I knew what color it really is!!!
Ann
Color Commentator
Very nice framing.
