"Blinking Eye" Planetary Nebula NGC 6826 in Cygnus | Hubble Space Telescope

"Blinking Eye" Planetary Nebula NGC 6826 in Cygnus | Hubble Space Telescope

NGC 6826's eye-like appearance is marred by two sets of blood-red 'fliers' that lie horizontally across the image. The surrounding faint green 'white' of the eye is believed to be gas that made up almost half of the star's mass for most of its life. The hot remnant star (in the center of the blue oval) drives a fast wind into older material, forming a hot interior bubble which pushes the older gas ahead of it to form a bright rim. (The star is one of the brightest stars in any planetary nebula.) NGC 6826 is 2,200 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This Hubble telescope observation was taken Jan. 27, 1996 with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

Credit: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Jason Alexander (University of Washington), Arsen Hajian (U.S. Naval Observatory), Yervant Terzian (Cornell University), Mario Perinotto (University of Florence, Italy), Patrizio Patriarchi (Arcetri Observatory, Italy) and NASA/ESA
Image Processing: Judy Schmidt
Release Date: Sept. 3, 2013

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