The Hourglass Nebula

Depicts: MyCn18, The Hourglass Nebula
Copyright: Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, andNASA
This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly-ionized oxygen (blue).
The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter which accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. In previous ground-based images, MyCn18 appears to be a pair of large outer rings with a smaller central one, but the fine details cannot be seen.
Last Update: 1 September 2019