Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Planetary Nebula HDW 3 in Perseus | Mayall Telescope

Planetary Nebula HDW 3 in Perseus | Mayall Telescope

This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Hartl-Dengel-Weinberger 3 (HDW 3) is a large, ancient planetary nebula. Its distinctive braided shape is the result of the planetary nebula colliding with the interstellar gas around it as the nebula moves through the galaxy. The star that produced the planetary nebula is the faint bluish one just below and to the right of the bright star near the center of the image.

The image was generated with observations in Hydrogen alpha (red) and Oxygen III (blue) filters. In this image, North is up, East is to the left.

The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope is a four-meter (158 inches) reflector telescope named after the American observational astronomer of the same name. The telescope saw first light on February 27, 1973, and was the second-largest in the world at that time.

Learn more about the Mayall Telescope: 
https://noirlab.edu/science/programs/kpno/telescopes/nicholas-mayall-4m-telescope


Credit: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and H. Schweiker (WIYN and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)
Release Date: Nov. 7, 2013


#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Nebulae #PlanetaryNebulae #HartlDengelWeinberger3 #HDW3 #PerseusConstellation #Cosmos #Universe #MayallTelescope #KPNO #Arizona #NSF #AURA #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

No comments:

Post a Comment