The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Reprocessing & Copyright: Jesús M.Vargas & Maritxu Poyal
Explanation: Oh what a
tangled web a
planetary nebula can weave. The
Red Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can result when a
normal star ejects its outer gases and becomes a
white dwarf star. Officially tagged
NGC 6537, this two-lobed symmetric
planetary nebula houses one of the
hottest white dwarfs ever observed, probably as part of a
binary star system. Internal
winds emanating from the central stars, visible in the center, have been measured in excess of 1000 kilometers per second. These
winds expand the nebula, flow along the nebula's walls, and cause waves of hot
gas and
dust to collide.
Atoms caught in these colliding shocks radiate light shown in the above representative-color picture by the
Hubble Space Telescope. The
Red Spider Nebula lies toward the
constellation of the Archer (
Sagittarius). Its distance is not well known but has been
estimated by some to be about 4,000
light-years.
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