A new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope of a portion of the Helix Nebula highlights comet-like knots, fierce stellar winds, and layers of gas shed off by a dying star interacting with its surrounding environment. Webb’s image also shows the stark transition between the hottest gas to the coolest gas as the shell expands out from the central white dwarf.

Credit: NASA

via wonders-of-the-cosmos

#JWST
#HelixNebula

Really cool JWST photos of the structure in the Helix Nebula. NIRCam ftw

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/intricacies-of-helix-nebula-revealed-with-nasas-webb/

#nasa #jwst #helixnebula

Hot new James Webb Space Telescope image just dropped. Like, *really* hot.

This is just a tiny portion of the #HelixNebula. It is the end result of a life stage of #stars with about the mass of the Sun. Like people, stars are born, live and die. The Helix Nebula represents old age for Sun-like stars, after the exhaust their nuclear fuel. The stars shed their outer layers into the surrounding space and contract to become white dwarfs, a kind of shell or husk of their former selves.

What you're seeing here are thousands of so-called 'cometary knots', each about the size of our Solar System. They're only 'cometary' in appearance, forming tails behind them. Note that they all point in a common direction, toward the white dwarf star that is outside the frame toward the top. The knots are clumps of material rich in molecules, shed by the dying star before it entered its current phase. Now they are blasted by the intense radiation coming from that star, which shapes their appearance.

As the European Space Agency puts it: "Its intense radiation lights up the surrounding gas, creating a rainbow of features: hot ionized gas closest to the white dwarf, cooler molecular hydrogen farther out, and protective pockets where more complex molecules can begin to form within dust clouds. This interaction is vital, as it’s the raw material from which new planets may one day form in other star systems."

Read more about this image on: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2601/

#Astronomy

🚀 JWST vừa công bố hình ảnh hồng hào Helix (650 ly) chi tiết nhất bằng tia hồng ngoại. Hình ảnh NIRCam cho thấy những nút khí dày đặc, gió sao va chạm tạo cấu trúc tinh vi và màu sắc phản ánh nhiệt độ, hoá học từ khí ion hoá nóng tới hydro phân tử và bụi lạnh. Đây là vật liệu tái chế cho các thế hệ sao và hành tinh mới. 🌌 #JamesWebb #JWST #HelixNebula #Astronomy #VũTrụ #ThiênVăn #NASA

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1qia8n3

A Narrowband Helix https://photo.m-j-s.net/blog/2025/11/a-narrowband-helix/

NGC 7293 - Helix Nebula in Aquarius - SHORGB v1

Some old narrowband data of the Helix was sitting for quite a while on my hard disk. Recently I started to adopt the “Foraxx” palette described in The Coldest Nights blog and used this technique with the...

#Aquarius #astrofotografie #astronomie #astronomy #astrophotography #EN #EyeOfGod #EyeOfSauron #hakos #HelixNebula #ias #NGC7293 #photoblog #remote

I managed to get a few shots of NGC7293, The Helix Nebula on 10/16. This is usually pretty low on my horizon so it's difficult to capture. Well worth the effort though...The first shot is natural color, the second and third are Hubble Palette and Foraxx Palette narrowband images. Thanks for looking. Ps8:3-4

#lightbucketastro #astrophotograpy #nebula #helixnebula #planewave