Hubble Heritage: Planetary Nebula NGC 5189

[bystander]

A Cosmic Holiday Ornament, Hubble-Style
Hubble Heritage | HubbleSite | 2012 Dec 18

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Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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'Tis the season for holiday decorating and tree-trimming. Not to be left out, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. The intricate structure of this bright gaseous nebula resembles a glass-blown holiday ornament with a glowing ribbon entwined.

Planetary nebulae represent the final brief stage in the life of a medium-sized star like our Sun. While consuming the last of the fuel in its core, the dying star expels a large portion of its outer envelope. This material then becomes heated by the radiation from the stellar remnant and radiates, producing glowing clouds of gas that can show complex structures, as the ejection of mass from the star is uneven in both time and direction.

A spectacular example of this beautiful complexity is seen in the bluish lobes of NGC 5189. Most of the nebula is knotty and filamentary in its structure. As a result of the mass-loss process, the planetary nebula has been created with two nested structures, tilted with respect to each other, that expand away from the center in different directions.

This double bipolar or quadrupolar structure could be explained by the presence of a binary companion orbiting the central star and influencing the pattern of mass ejection during its nebula-producing death throes. The remnant of the central star, having lost much of its mass, now lives its final days

The bright golden ring that twists and tilts through the image is made up of a large collection of radial filaments and cometary knots. These are usually formed by the combined action of photo-ionizing radiation and stellar winds.

This image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on October 8, 2012, in filters tuned to the specific colors of fluorescing sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Broad filters in the visible and near-infrared were used to capture the star colors.

A swoosh in space: Merry Christmas from Hubble
ESA/HEIC Hubble Photo Release | 2012 Dec 18

[owlice]

Very nice!!!

These are nice, too, though expensive.

Click to view full size image

[orin stepanek]

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... 9/image/a/
The best resolution available can be found here.
ABOUT THIS IMAGE:
'Tis the season for holiday decorating and tree-trimming. Not to be left out, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. The intricate structure of this bright gaseous nebula resembles a glass-blown holiday ornament with a glowing ribbon entwined.

Planetary nebulae represent the final brief stage in the life of a medium-sized star like our Sun. While consuming the last of the fuel in its core, the dying star expels a large portion of its outer envelope. This material then becomes heated by the radiation from the stellar remnant and radiates, producing glowing clouds of gas that can show complex structures, as the ejection of mass from the star is uneven in both time and direction.

A spectacular example of this beautiful complexity is seen in the bluish lobes of NGC 5189. Most of the nebula is knotty and filamentary in its structure. As a result of the mass-loss process, the planetary nebula has been created with two nested structures, tilted with respect to each other, that expand away from the center in different directions.

This double bipolar or quadrupolar structure could be explained by the presence of a binary companion orbiting the central star and influencing the pattern of mass ejection during its nebula-producing death throes. The remnant of the central star, having lost much of its mass, now lives its final days as a white dwarf. However, there is no visual candidate for the possible companion.

The bright golden ring that twists and tilts through the image is made up of a large collection of radial filaments and cometary knots. These are usually formed by the combined action of photo-ionizing radiation and stellar winds.

This image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on October 8, 2012, in filters tuned to the specific colors of fluorescing sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Broad filters in the visible and near-infrared were used to capture the star colors.

For additional information, please contact:

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
410-338-4514
villard@stsci.edu

Object Name: NGC 5189

Image Type: Astronomical


Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

[BMAONE23]

The first thing I thought of was if you Reversed the image you would see this

From WIKI
Perhaps this is where Krypton once was

[neufer]

Perhaps this is where Krypton once was

Quibble: To evade the truth or importance of an issue by raising trivial distinctions.

[BMAONE23]

does this make you the Quibbling Quotidian Quotationist

[bystander]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Hubblecast 61: A tour of NGC 5189

[Beyond]

Very nice!!!

These are nice, too, though expensive.

Click to view full size image

Say... upon close inspection, all these pictures of 'heavenly' bodies, show that they're in the branching Tree nebula.

[bystander]

Portrait Of NGC 5189: New Light On An Old Planetary Nebula
Universe Today | Tammy Plotner | 2013 Feb 18

[i]Composite Image of NGC 5189 Courtesy of Robert Gendler[/i]

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Stretching across three light years of space and located about 3,000 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Musca, an incredible and rather understudied planetary nebula awaits a new hand to bring out new light. While most planetary nebula have a rather normal, bloated star look, NGC 5189 shows an extraordinary amount of loops and curls not normally seen in objects of its type. Just what is going on here?

This incredibly detailed image comes from the one and only Robert Gendler and was assembled from three separate data sources. The detail for the nebula is from Hubble Space Telescope data, the background starfield from the Gemini Observatory/AURA and the color data from his own equipment. Here we see fanciful gas clouds with thick clumps decorating them. Intense radiation and gas streams from the central dying star in waves, fashioning out hollows and caves in the enveloping clouds. While these clumps in the clouds may appear as wispy details, each serves as a reminder of just how vast space can be… for each an every one of them is about the same size as our Solar System.

“The complex morphology of this PN is puzzling and has not been studied in detailed so far. Our investigation reveals the presence of a new dense and cold infrared torus (alongside the optical one) which probably generated one of the two optically seen bipolar outflows and which might be responsible for the twisted appearance of the optical torus via an interaction process.” says L. Sabin (et al). ” The high-resolution MES-AAT spectra clearly show the presence of filamentary and knotty structures as well as three expanding bubbles. Our findings therefore suggest that NGC 5189 is a quadrupolar nebula with multiple sets of symmetrical condensations in which the interaction of outflows has determined its complex morphology.”

And just as incredibly large as some things can be – others can be as small. At the heart of NGC 5189 shines the tiny light of its central star… no bigger than Earth. It wobbles its way through time, rotating rapidly and spewing material into space like a runaway fire hydrant. Astronomers speculate there might be a binary star hidden inside, since usually planetary nebulae of this type have them. However, only one star has been found at the nebula’s center and it might be one very big, very bad wolf.

“Around 15% are known or suspected binaries, while the remaining 18% are non-emission line nuclei which require further study. Selecting for LIS (low ionization structures) therefore will give a mix of mostly binary and emission line nuclei which will require further observations to separate.” explains B. Miszalski (et al). “Almost all the [WR] CSPN in the sample belong to the hot [WO] type that have more extreme and chaotic LIS covering their entire nebulae, presumably due to turbulence from the strong [WR] winds disrupting pre-existing LIS.”

Just why is this celestial tapestry so complicated and complex? The answer isn’t a simple one – it’s one that has many plausible theories. We know that when a star similar to the Sun expends its fuel, it will begin to shed its outer layers… layers which normally take on very basic shape. These “normal” shapes are usually a sphere, sometimes a double lobe and at times it can be a ring or helix. However, NGC 5189 just doesn’t follow rules. Over time, researchers have speculated it has given off different outlfows at different stages – one prominent as a very visible torus situated around mid-point in the structure – consistent with the theory of a binary star system with a precessing symmetry axis. Still, there is clearly more research needed.

“Our preliminary results of a comparative spectroscopic study of these two objects shows that the chemical composition of the two nebulae is completely different, even though their morphology is most probably quite similar.” says VF Polcaro (et al). ” In addition, the PN appears much more chemically homogeneous. These features are clearly associated with the evolutionary paths of the stars.”

“The striking broad emission line spectroscopic appearance of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars has long defied analysis, due to the extreme physical conditions within their line and continuum forming regions.” explains Paul Crowther. “Theoretical and observational evidence that WR winds depend on metallicity is presented, with implications for evolutionary models, ionizing fluxes, and the role of WR stars within the context of core-collapse supernovae and long-duration gamma ray bursts.”

Is NGC 5189 the handiwork of a binary star? Or is it the product of an intensely hot Wolf-Rayet? Like the proverbial Tootsie Pop equation… the world may never know.