Soap Bubble in Space

By Miss Cellania in Pictures, Science & Tech on Jul 24, 2009 at 11:52 am

You would be forgiven if you thought this picture was a soap bubble in front of an astronomical picture. This is a picture of a planetary nebula that was overlooked until this month. Astronomers say it is either spherical or column-shaped, in which case the camera is looking down the barrel of the column. Records indicate that the nebula, officially named PN G75.5+1.7 and nicknamed the “Cygnus Bubble”, was recorded sixteen years ago during the second Palomar Sky Survey, but was overlooked at the time because it was so faint. Link -Thanks, healthylivinggal83!

(image credit: Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAO)

Tags: astronomy, nebula

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JenMem
Jul 24th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
That’s no moon. It’s a spherical planetary nebula.
Vonskippy
Jul 24th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Now if they find a really big fish in space, they’ll know how to communicate with it.
Mike390430499
Jul 24th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
I don’t think it’s a column.. you can see the gas is denser along the edges and then it gets thinner and thinner towards the center until quickly it ‘disappears’. If it were a straight-on column you’d just have a single color circle.

Regardless, it’s impressive, and I’m surprised we’ve never seen something like this before, and that I never noticed we’d never seen something like this before

Also, chocolate is delicious
Wes
Jul 24th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
They said column, Mike, not hollow tube.
catsvillage
Jul 25th, 2009 at 1:31 am
amazingly beautiful.
Mike390430499
Jul 25th, 2009 at 5:41 am
A column is a hollow tube.
Mike390430499
Jul 25th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Well, in this case it would have to be a hollowish tube, except even that doesn’t fit the actual image, but, if it were a solid column, it would be a flat-colored circle
Kalel
Jul 25th, 2009 at 11:00 am
If this were a simple nova, there should be some kind of corresponding object at the center, perhaps a pulsar.
whitcwa
Jul 25th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Couldn’t it be a ring? A cylinder seems an unlikely shape.
Foreigner1
Jul 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
…A remnant of God playing in his younger years…
Wes
Jul 28th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
“A column is a hollow tube.”

And here I didn’t realize there were so many hollow tubes holding up the Parthenon.

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