Just for You: A Necklace from Hubble

By Nancy Atkinson - August 11, 2011 04:58 PM UTC | Site News

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Awww, how nice of the Hubble Space Telescope, providing us all with a little cosmic bling in this great new view of the Necklace Nebula! From the image, it's quite obvious why this object carries the name it does (and who wants to call it by its technical name PN G054.2-03.4, anyway?). The Necklace Nebula is a

recently discovered planetary nebula,

the glowing remains of an ordinary, Sun-like star. You'd need to have a fairly large neck to wear this necklace, as the nebula consists of a bright ring measuring 12 trillion miles wide, dotted with dense, bright knots of gas that resemble diamonds in a necklace.

How did this unique nebula originate? A long time ago, (about 10,000 years) in an aging binary star system far away (15,000 light-years from Earth) one of the old stars ballooned to the point where it engulfed its companion star. The smaller star continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the giant's rotation rate.

The bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the gas escaped along the star's equator, producing a ring. The embedded bright knots are dense gas clumps in the ring.

The pair is so close, only a few million miles apart, they appear as one bright dot in the center. The stars are furiously whirling around each other, completing an orbit in a little more than a day.

The Necklace Nebula is located in the constellation Sagitta. In this composite image, taken on July 2, Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 captured the glow of hydrogen (blue), oxygen (green), and nitrogen (red).

Thanks Hubble for the new cosmic jewelry!

Want a larger version of this bling?

See the HubbleSite for more info.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com