Astronomy Picture of the Day

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                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2020 June 30

                Bright Planetary Nebula NGC 7027 from Hubble
   Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Joel Kastner (RIT) et al.; Processing: Alyssa
                                Pagan (STScI)

   Explanation: What created this unusual planetary nebula? NGC 7027 is
   one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary
   nebulas known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027 first started
   expanding, as visible from Earth, about 600 years ago. For much of its
   history, the planetary nebula has been expelling shells, as seen in
   blue in the featured image. In modern times, though, for reasons
   unknown, it began ejecting gas and dust (seen in red) in specific
   directions that created a new pattern that seems to have four corners.
   These shells and patterns have been mapped in impressive detail by
   recent images from the Wide Field Camera 3 onboard the Hubble Space
   Telescope. What lies at the nebula's center is unknown, with one
   hypothesis holding it to be a close binary star system where one star
   sheds gas onto an erratic disk orbiting the other star. NGC 7027, about
   3,000 light years away, was first discovered in 1878 and can be seen
   with a standard backyard telescope toward the constellation of the Swan
   (Cygnus).

                     Tomorrow's picture: inverted Earth
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