Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Aquarius (Aqr)  ·  Contains:  Helix Nebula  ·  NGC 7293
NGC7293 Helix Nebula 2023, Antha Adkins
NGC7293 Helix Nebula 2023
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Description

On our recent trip to the fabulous dark skies of Dell City, Texas, I mostly tried to image things that would be difficult to capture from my light-polluted driveway at home. However, a couple of those dimmer objects weren’t visible at sunset, so I snuck in some brighter objects as well.

NGC 7293, also called the Helix Nebula or Eye of God Nebula, is a planetary nebula - the gases expelled from a star before it becomes a white dwarf, lit up by that star. It’s located in the Milky Way, approximately 655 light years away, and it’s approximately 2.5 light-years across. It’s estimated to be 10,600 years old. Its apparent size is 25 arcminutes, and it has an apparent magnitude of 7.6.

This is 51 minutes of data.

This is a particularly spectacular planetary nebula, and it makes me want to try to image more. Isn’t our galaxy amazing?

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NGC7293 Helix Nebula 2023, Antha Adkins