An infrared, pseudogreen, red light view of a beautifully symmetrical bipolar preplanetary nebula (are we just calling these 'young' planetary nebulas now?). The blue appearance is due to the filters used. Note the blue outflows are glowing, ionized gas, not dust. There is a very faint but curious stray bit of gas pointing directly back to the central star down and to the left of the nebula.
Thumbnails in the HLA are of awful quality and obviously created with some error but the actual data (acquired through DADS) is very nice looking.
This object was also imaged for proposal 10536.
Red: ACS/WFC F814W
Green: Pseudo
Blue: ACS/WFC F606W
North is NOT up. It is 9.77° counter-clockwise from up.
Tags: IRAS 19309+2646 Hen 2-437 Min 1-91 HLA HST Hubble planetary nebula young preplanetary nebula pseudogreen infrared red light
This is the 100th planetary nebula I have processed! Woo hoo. Lots of strange and interesting structures in this one. The dust lane looks like it's corkscrew-shaped but I might be imagining that.
I used some WFC3/UVIS data for the nebula itself and some older WF/PC to finish off the corners to expand the star field so the composition wasn't so closely cramped around the nebula.
Red: hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f814w_sci + hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f658n_sci
Green: hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f656n_sci + hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f555w_sci
Blue: hst_11580_03_wfc3_uvis_f555w_sci
Outer corners only:
Red: hst_06364_01_wfpc2_f814w_pc_sci + hst_06347_25_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_07285_06_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci + hst_06364_01_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_06364_01_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
North is up.
Tags: IRAS 17423-1755 planetary nebula HST HLA Hubble preplanetary nebula protoplanetary nebula
You think you know someone and then you look at them in infrared and then wonder what else they aren't showing you. Seriously, I have seen this picture of the same object at least a dozen times in the past so I didn't expect anything out of the ordinary when I looked at the data in the archive. But there are a whole bunch of infrared observations where these weird, geometric arcs or ovals show up! Fascinating. Note they are a bit blurry as data from NICMOS tends to be. Sometimes I wonder if all the processing I do to its data is right or not but there really are some interesting things there even though it's so messy.
Upon further inspection of the nebula I get a good sense of its dimensionality and to me it appears that we are looking down at an hourglass from a 45° angle or so. I think this is why processing is so addictive. I stare at things for a long time and come away with a much better understanding than I previously had and maybe even some extra information that wasn't in a press release at some point.
Oh, I got rid of the large, distracting diffraction spikes as best I could while doing the least harm to the object that I could manage.
Red: HST_11331_03_NIC_NIC3_F160W_sci + hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f675w_pc_sci + hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f656n_pc_sci + hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_11093_01_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci + hst_06353_08_wfpc2_f487n_pc_sci
North is up.
Tags: PN Hb 12 Hb 12 Hubble 12 planetary nebula HST HLA Hubble
Something like the Water Lily but smaller. It seems that it is not uncommon that these preplanetary nebulas look like a work in progress drawing of a flower.
Red: HST_9463_13_ACS_HRC_F814W_sci
Green: Pseudo
Blue: HST_9463_13_ACS_HRC_F606W_sci
North is up.
Tags: IRAS 19024+0044 preplanetary nebula HST HLA Hubble
I think this is almost the last preplanetary nebula in the Hubble archive. I'm not sure if I should be sad that there aren't that many or happy that this many had their pictures taken. They are elusive and marvelous. I am definitely happy to live in a time when the HST exists. What kind of images will future telescopes look at? Will these amazing glimpses into our galaxy look feeble and inferior to some yet unborn stargazer? I love Hubble, but I do hope that its successors achieve this.
Red: HST_10536_06_ACS_HRC_F814W_sci
Green: Pseudo
Blue: HST_10536_06_ACS_HRC_F606W_sci
North is NOT up. It's 35° counter-clockwise from up.
Tags: IRAS 20068+4051 protoplanetary nebula preplanetary nebula HLA HST Hubble