The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
From NASA’s Astronomy
Picture of the Day
Oh what a tangled
web a planetary nebula can weave.
The Red
Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can
result when a normal star ejects its outer gases and becomes a white
dwarf star.
Officially tagged NGC 6537,
this two-lobed symmetric planetary nebula houses one of the hottest
white dwarfs ever observed, probably as part of a binary
star system.
Internal winds emanating from the central stars,
visible in the center, have been measured in excess of 1000 kilometers per
second.
These winds expand
the nebula, flow along the nebula's walls, and cause waves of hot gas and dust to
collide.
Atoms caught
in these colliding shocks radiate light shown in the above representative-color
picture by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Red Spider Nebula lies toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). Its distance is not well known but
has been estimated by some to be about 4,000 light-years.
