Me 2-1 (2013)

This is the smallest planetary nebula I’ve found in the archive yet, zoomed to 200%. Isn’t it cute? Ok, maybe only an astronomer could love this little guy.

Paul W. Merrill discovered this without a fancy space telescope by using spectroscopy. This view is small but Merrill never saw it with any detail at all. It’s almost indistinguishable from a star through anything but a powerful telescope like Hubble.

Red: hst_05107_02_wfpc2_f439w_wf_sci + hst_05107_02_wfpc2_f547m_wf_sci
Green: hst_05107_02_wfpc2_f336w_wf_sci
Blue: hst_05107_02_wfpc2_f336w_wf_sci

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.