NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is a well-established feature on the Internet. Many are of interest only to specialists, but now and again one comes up that’s a work of art in its own right. This one seems to qualify.
It’s of the M2-9 Planetary Nebula, which is about 2,100 light years from Earth. The photograph was published on September 15th this year. (Follow that link for a much larger version of the image.)
Spectacular, isn’t it? Does anyone know how large those hourglass shapes are, in terms of light-years in length or other measurements? Wikipedia doesn’t say.
Peter
Following the wikipedia link for the dimensions, i found:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1997A%26A…319..267S
"The physical and geometrical parameters of the nebula then follow. M 2-9 is at a distance of 650pc, is 0.4pc long, has a luminosity of 550Lsun_, and its outer nebula has a dynamical age of 1200yrs, in round numbers."
That would make it 1,3 lightyears or 12,4 trillion km long.
Neat
Does NASA have a sign-up list to receive these pictures on a daily basis?186