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NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula

Explanation: It's the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula. Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, the glowing gas originated in the outer layers of a star like our Sun. In this representative color picture, the hot blue pool of light seen surrounding this binary system is energized by the hot surface of the faint star. Although photographed to explore unusual symmetries, it's the asymmetries that help make this planetary nebula so intriguing. Neither the unusual shape of the surrounding cooler shell nor the structure and placements of the cool filamentary dust lanes running across NGC 3132 are well understood.

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Huh, light shinning inwards instead of outwards. Well, theres always one in every crowd that doesn't conform to standard thinking and this seems to be the one in our neighborhood. Maybe someone left their solar oven on??

Beyond wrote:Huh, light shinning inwards instead of outwards.

Not sure what you're referring to here. Like all planetary nebulas, the glowing gas is ionized by the central star. That is, the radiation from the central star shines outwards, ionizing the surrounding gas shell, which re-radiates photons in all directions.

kind of reminds me of a gem stone!
from wikipedia

Chris Peterson wrote:

Beyond wrote:Huh, light shinning inwards instead of outwards.

Not sure what you're referring to here. Like all planetary nebulas, the glowing gas is ionized by the central star. That is, the radiation from the central star shines outwards, ionizing the surrounding gas shell, which re-radiates photons in all directions.

Maybe it's just the way it was presented, like a solar ring shinning inward. I don't ever remember seeing a nebula with a yellow radiating ring before, so my highly untrained mind didn't think in the correct terms. Especially that early in the morning.

Beyond wrote:Maybe it's just the way it was presented, like a solar ring shinning inward. I don't ever remember seeing a nebula with a yellow radiating ring before, so my highly untrained mind didn't think in the correct terms. Especially that early in the morning. :lol:

It is easy to let ourselves be fooled when viewing color-mapped narrowband images. Yellow is a mix of red and green, which in this case represent N II and H-alpha. So the resemblance to a "solar ring" seems natural, but in reality it looks nothing like that.

Why is it named "Eight Burst"? I know there is a good reason. I just don't know what it is.

It looks like a planetary cocoon!

"Neither the unusual shape of the surrounding cooler shell nor the structure and placements of the cool filamentary dust lanes running across NGC 3132 are well understood. "

It seems somewhat easy to imagine (would prefer to image) the reversal of time and the transition of a star similar to ours to this kind of structure complete with filaments and a convenient window to the interior space created as the expanded.



First question: the related bright star shown in the image. Is it too distant to have created the hole through which we view this nebula?
hypothesis:
the surrounding structure seems to me like a relatively simple expansion of a spheroid, with variations in the densities of gases creating structure and filaments as the sphere expanded?

Anyone?

moonstruck---: the nebula looks like number eight--it is that simple. See the "bar" of the Arabic number {via India}? The Mice is another example of naming astroobjects whimsically. Thanx.

islader2 wrote:
moonstruck---: the nebula looks like number eight--it is that simple.
See the "bar" of the Arabic number {via India}?

Written from my post on "Stardust and Betelgeuse (2011 Jun 28)"

Maybe this pushing of dust and material explains the "dust lane" in NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula picture of June 26, 2011, just a couple of days ago. (This article of several days earlier.)
It said it was a mystery of how they formed. MAYBE THIS IS HOW THEY FORMED!!!!!!

"Neither the unusual shape of the surrounding cooler shell nor the structure and placements of the cool filamentary dust lanes running across NGC 3132 are well understood."

Maybe a Red Giant, in furiously pushing out stellar matter and system matter (from gravel to asteroids), from its solar winds, bunches up that material out beyond its system (so of like the Ort cloud). 400 AU, is pretty good. Then when the star "sheds" its gases and they go out they expand into that dust as well. So then you have a mixture, and you get lanes and spots etc...totally random depending on placement and motion, of course.

Thanks to Betelgeuse giving up some of its secrets....

Boomer. :----====== <-that is a smiley face looking through a telescope.