The Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of NGC 6565.
This Hubble image shows the planetary nebula NGC 6565. Image credit: ESA / Hubble / NASA / M. Novak.
NGC 6565, also known as Hen 2-362 or ESO 456-70, is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Sagittarius.
Though the distance is not really known, there seems to be some consensus that the object is approximately 15,200 light-years away.
Only six degrees from the direction to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, it’s roughly halfway to the Galaxy’s central core. The nebula is widely thought to be a part of the Galaxy’s central bulge.
NGC 6565 is a cloud of gas that was ejected from an aging star after strong stellar winds pushed the star’s outer layers away into space.
Once enough material was ejected, the star’s luminous core was exposed and it began to produce UV radiation, exciting the surrounding gas to varying degrees and causing it to radiate in an attractive array of colors.
These same colors can be seen in the famous Ring Nebula, a prominent example of a planetary nebula like this one.
Planetary nebulae are illuminated for around 10,000 years before the central star begins to cool and shrink to become a white dwarf.
When this happens, the star’s light drastically diminishes and ceases to excite the surrounding gas, so the nebula fades from view.
Amateur astronomer Matej Novak submitted a version of this image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures basic image competition.
