Young Stingray

Credit: Matt Bobrowsky (Orbital Sci­ences Cor­po­ra­tion) and NASA

It may be a lit­tle fuzzy, but the Stingray Neb­ula is the youngest known plan­e­tary neb­ula. A ring of gas, shown in green, is expand­ing from the cen­tral star. A com­pan­ion, diag­o­nally above and to the left, is affect­ing the growth of the bub­ble caus­ing other bridges and rings of gas to appear. The red curved lines is gas that is heated when the cen­tral star’s solar wind, which is blow­ing fast, hits the wall of the bub­bles. The col­ors shown are actu­ally the col­ors given off by the glow­ing red gases of nitro­gen, green for oxy­gen and blue for hydrogen.

The Stingray Neb­ula, also known as Hen-1357, is found in the south­ern con­stel­la­tion Ara, the Altar. The neb­ula is as large as 130 solar sys­tems. It appears so fuzzy because at a dis­tance of 18,000 light years, it appears only as big as a dime viewed from a mile a way.