When Winter Comes
NGC 2392 can be seen high in the sky for most of the night during the Northern Hemisphere's winter. With
a fur hat and a potentially frost-nipped countenance, the appropriately named Eskimo Nebula glows brightly
in the constellation of Gemini. However it is a small target for earth bound observers to capture much
detail through our blurring atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope's
image of NGC 2392 shows an astounding
amount of detail in the filaments and radial spokes that are currently surviving the radiative onslaught of the
central star.. The amateur image above (you can put the windows side-by-side) comes no where near this resolution.
However, unlike the HST image which uses a mapped color scheme, the image above does attempt to represent
the nebula in the colors we would see this with our eyes (if they were as sensitive as the camera that took the
image). Note how various teal and red filaments are superimposed on each other.
This image was assembled at a recent workshop using two data sets with permission of
Sharon Kempton and Peter Erickson.
|
