Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe Challenge #144

Here’s this week’s image for the Where In The Universe Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft/telescope responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.

UPDATE: Answer is now posted below.

This is a closeup of part of the Helix Nebula, or NGC 7293. Produced in 2003, at the time it was one of the largest and most detailed celestial images ever made. The composite picture is a seamless blend of ultra-sharp images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope combined with the wide view of the Mosaic Camera on the National Science Foundation’s 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. See more info on this picture at the HubbleSite.

28 Replies to “Where In The Universe Challenge #144”

  2. This is definitely zoomified neblulosity of some sort….I’ll guess it’s a part of the Eagle Nebula, taken by Hubble. 🙂

  5. Definitely Helix Nebula NGC 7293 by Hubble, one of my favorite, sometimes referred to as “the eye of God.” Chilling by that description!

  10. OK, so is THIS one Praxis exploding due to over-mining?

    (Thank you, clatonium, from February 16, 2011 at 12:54 pm.)

  12. It’s the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) all right, but you’ve got the wrong telescope (HST) in mind; I’ll wager that the above close-up image was taken by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile.

  17. Surely this has to be a painting by one of the Impressionists!!!
    Frankly who cares what astronomical object it is!!
    A very pretty image, and one rightly deserved to be hung on a wall or used as a computer screen desktop!

  18. My vote is for M57, the Ring Nebula, probably by the Hubble space telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

    M57 has the characteristic colors of red, yellow and blue in its photo; whereas NGC 3132 is yellow, green and blue; and NGC 7293 the Helix Nebula is red, yellow, green, and blue, and has the very distinctive and highly defined ‘cometary knots’ that alternately look to be ‘streaming inward’ or being ‘blown outward’, at the ‘boundary layer’ between the ‘inner clear space’ and the ‘dusty periphery’.

    M57 on the other hand, has its cometary knots in a much more ‘fuzzy’ or ‘indistinct’ resolution, as compared to Helix; and 3132 is even less defined and more fuzzy than M57.

    But then, I specialize in this subject !

  23. I think this is a section of the Helix nebule in Aquarius, taken by the Hubble Space telescope.

  25. A section of NGC 7293 (The Helix Nebula) composed of images from the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope and wide-angle images from the Mosaic Camera on the WIYN 0.9-m Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

  26. It’s either the Ring Nebula or the Helix. HST I imagine.

    Or, it’s a close-up of my eye after a night of partying …

  27. I concur with santafedog. It is definetly the bottom of his (her?) fish tank. Nancy sure is sneaky, isn’t she?

    In the unlikely chance that it is not the bottom of santafedog’s fish tank, then I am pretty sure I have seen this picture and remember it as a nebula, but since I am not eidetic and am to old and lazy to try to find it, I will go with the consensus of the Helix nebula.

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