Saturnebula!

NGC 2818 is a strikingly attractive planetary nebula found in the southern constellation Pyxis (The Compass). The beautiful hues pictured here are the result of a sequence of exposures through narrow-band filters, highlighting emission from nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms showing as red, green, and blue in the image. This is an APOD image. Click through to see the APOD page, click the image there for a higher resolution version.

Saturnebula!

This is a depiction of a pair of the most conspicuous objects in the night sky (after major solar system objects). On the left is shown one the most recognizable nebulae of all, the Horsehead Nebula. On the right, the Orion Nebula, an object bright enough to easily seen by the naked eye – it appears as the middle “star” in Orion’s sword. Both are, in fact, parts of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, an object which, despite being about 1300 light years away, has an apparent size similar to your outstretched hand held at arm’s length in the direction of the constellation of Orion. (Which itself is one of the easiest to find and recognizable patterns in the night sky.) This is one of the most beautiful and keenly observed objects in astronomy. It's a stellar nursery, (in other words a molecular cloud in which stars are actively forming) the closest such in existence, and studied pretty closely as a result.

This is an APOD image. Click the image here for the APOD page, click the image there for a detailed view.

Saturnebula!

Ok, in an effort to broaden this feature, since distinctive pictures of galaxies aren't an infinite resource, I'm rechristening (and retiming) it as Saturnebula. Yeah, it's a slightly goofy construction, but it's distinctive, and it's probably easier to post on Saturdays anyway - plenty of Friday Galactic Blogs went up on Saturdays in any case. I'll be pretty broad in my definition of "nebula," to encompass any cool galactic photos I find, consistently with older definitions like that of Messier.

This particular beauty is a depiction of the Veil Nebula, the leftovers from a supernova in the direction of the constellation Cygnus at an approximate distance between 1400 and 2600 light years. It spans three degrees in the night sky (six times the apparent size of a full moon) but is notoriously difficult to see in visible light, despite an apparent magnitude of about seven, which nearly as bright as the dimmest naked eye stars (corresponding to an apparent magnitude of about six.)

It's an APOD image, and you know the drill.