Ready to pull some Celestial weight?

'Cause here is the Dumbbell Nebula.

Dumbbell (M27) is nearby in our galaxy at about 1360 light years away, in the constellation Vulcpecula. It bright enough to be seen with binoculars. 

This has the distinction of being the first such nebula to be discovered by astronomer Charles Messier, in 1764. In fact, the "M" in M28 is for the Messier sky catalog. Charles' telescope could see primarily the northern sky and he made the most of it by noting over 100 features before he died.

You see, Chuck was really seeking out comets and wondered if a lot of things he found were a product of comets. He thought that the appearance of comets in our sky predicted major developments on Earth, like the birth of Napoleon. 

At least he said so. Charles also probably just wanted to ingratiate himself to the new emperor so his astronomy funding would continue. He was not above such things.

So much for astronomy's early science. We now know that any major event related to comets pretty much means running into one...which ain't pretty.

Anyway, 10,000 years ago a star grew old and heavy. It exploded, sending massive amounts of junk outward in a kind of spherical shock wave. Hydrogen first, followed by the light blue oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, ash, and dust, all of which have now caught up with the hydrogen layer and are bulging out wherever they can.

And, if you look closely in the middle of this thing, you'll find a tiny blueish star. It's the last remnant of the original star, now a 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘧. It has no more fuel. It's just a dense mass of heavy elements and compounds that is really, really hot from its old days as a nuclear furnace. it will slowly cool down and eventually disappear from view in a million years, or so.

In this case, "dwarf" is a misnomer, as the star is likely 45,000 miles wide. Some other white dwarves are as small as Earth, at 8000 miles across. The original star must have been massive.

It appears the dwarf is spinning. It is also wobbling like a top while shooting intense energy out its poles. This irradiates a circle of hydrogen gas above the north and south poles, making it glow red. You can see where the current pole position is now by the extra bright red jet in the upper right.

There is a bigger shock wave well beyond this image. It's a lot dimmer and I chose to expose for the brighter center so we can see how the expanding gasses look in detail.

Tonight's log entry was written while jamming to 𝘓𝘰 𝘉𝘪𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘝𝘦𝘭𝘰 𝘉𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘭𝘢, by the Avishai Cohen Trio. The album is called 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘥.