NGC 5979 (2013)

I won’t claim this one is very interesting. Or maybe the reason it is visually uninteresting is what might make it interesting? There’s virtually no Hydrogen-alpha emissions to be found, which is usually displayed as pinkish red in my other nebulas. I did include the Ha (f658n) filter but it contributed virtually no light to the image at all.

You might notice some ever so slight fringing due to some of the data being from three years prior to the rest of the data. This happens because the nebula’s expansion is noticeable after a few years.

You might also notice I used two f555w filters for green. It helped reduce the noise for the green channel slightly.

Anyway, this neglected nebula doesn’t even have a common name that I could find. I’d call it the Snail Shell Nebula. It also makes me think of an embryo.

Red: hst_06119_93_wfpc2_f814w_pc_sci + hst_08390_04_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_06119_93_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci + hst_08390_04_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_08390_04_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci

North is NOT up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.