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Engraved Hourglass Nebula

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Right ascension
  
13 39 35.116

Radius
  
- ly

Magnitude
  
13

Apparent magnitude (V)
  
13

Declination
  
−67° 22′ 51.45″

Distance to Earth
  
8,154 light years

Constellation
  
Musca

Engraved Hourglass Nebula Hourglass Nebula MyCn18 Constellation Guide

Designations
  
ESO 97-1, Engraved Hourglass Nebula, Etched Hourglass Nebula, PN MyCn 18

Coordinates
  
RA 13h 39m 35s | Dec -67° 22′ 52″

Similar
  
Cat's Eye Nebula, Mz 3, Eskimo Nebula, Helix Nebula, NGC 6302

The Engraved Hourglass Nebula (also known as MyCn 18) is a young planetary nebula in the southern constellation Musca about 8,000 light-years from Earth. It was discovered by Annie Jump Cannon and Margaret W. Mayall during their work on an extended Henry Draper Catalogue (the catalogue was built between 1918 and 1924). At the time, it was designated simply as a small faint planetary nebula. Much improved telescopes and imaging techniques allowed the hourglass shape of the nebula to be discovered by Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on January 18, 1996. It is conjectured that MyCn 18's hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud which is denser near its equator than its poles. The vivid colours given off by the nebula are the result of different 'shells' of elements being expelled from the dying star, in this case helium, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon.

Engraved Hourglass Nebula MyCn18 The Hourglass Nebula39s life comes to an end as it runs out

The Hourglass Nebula was photographed by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 of the Hubble Space Telescope.

A less-famous "Hourglass Nebula" is located inside the Lagoon Nebula.

Engraved Hourglass Nebula 4 Cool Facts About the Hourglass Nebula Astronomy Is Awesome

  • The Hourglass Nebula was featured on the cover of the April 1997 issue of National Geographic. The nebula’s unique appearance led the magazine’s editors to comment, “Astronomers looked 8,000 light-years into the cosmos with the Hubble Space Telescope, and it seemed that the eye of God was staring back.”
  • The Hourglass Nebula serves as the front cover for Pearl Jam's 2000 album Binaural.
  • The Hourglass Nebula appears in the popular game, Final Doom.
  • The Hourglass Nebula appears on a poster in the CERN laboratory in the film Angels & Demons.
  • The Hourglass Nebula appears extensively, and is used as a major plot point in the 2002 animated series Space Pirate Captain Herlock: The Endless Odyssey.
  • The Hourglass Nebula appears in the video games Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 as one of the clusters that can be visited for missions.
  • The Hourglass Effect is a 2008 album by the British band Shadowkeep.
  • The Hourglass Nebula appears on the cover for International Body Talk Association's "Finding Health" manual.
  • The Hourglass Nebula appears on a poster in Raj Koothrappali's office in the episode "The 43 Peculiarity" (among others) of 'The Big Bang Theory.

    • Engraved Hourglass Nebula httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

    Engraved Hourglass Nebula Engraved Hourglass Nebula page 4 Pics about space

    References

    Engraved Hourglass Nebula Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA