Mesmerizing snapshots of the structure of the Nebula Saturn

The Saturn nebula is a spectacular planetary nebula, which contains many morphological and kinematic sub-systems.

The European southern Observatory (ESO) released a magnificent image of the Saturn Nebula, located at a distance of about 5000 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius.

The image obtained on the Very Large Telescope of ESO (VLT) Observatory, Paranal in Chile. Have been involved in this receiver MUSE: feature of the device is that it not only builds the image, but also stores for each point the information about the emission spectrum.

The Saturn nebula (NGC 7009) is a spectacular planetary nebula, which contains many morphological and kinematic sub-systems. The object was discovered by William Herschel in September 1782.

Nebula Saturn is originally a low-mass star. At the end of his career it turned into a red giant and then cast off their outer shell. Ejected material scattered in the surrounding space by intense stellar winds and were excited by ultraviolet radiation of the hot core of the star. Thus was formed the circumstellar nebula composed of dust and glowing multi-colored hot gas. Doomed to the death star, which is in the process of becoming a white dwarf, is visible in this picture in the centre of the nebula.

Overall, the picture fascinates with its beauty. In the picture of the Nebula Saturn is depicted as a group of overlapping each other pink and blue bubbles of irregular shape. The carried out observations allowed to identify numerous complex structures: it is an elliptical inner shell, the outer shell and the halo. It is expected that the findings will help to better understand the details of the evolution of low-mass stars and how planetary nebulae acquire their bizarre forms.

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