Boomerang Nebula (2013)

There’s only one filter in the archive other than polarized filters so this is a monochrome image with a color gradient applied. It’s called the coldest known place in the universe (how does one measure this, anyway?) other than what some laboratory experiments have produced so blue may be more appropriate but I think fiery red is easier to see. Besides, blue has already been done.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_Nebula

Recent observations by ALMA revealed some new shapes in the nebula. You can see a picture and read about it here. I went searching the ALMA archive to see if I could look at some raw pictures myself but when I submitted the download request I was presented with a bunch of very large compressed files which all together were bigger than the free space I have on all my hard drives. Sheesh. Mission abort!

There is a small amount of missing data at the corners, mostly the lower left. I didn’t want to awkwardly crop it so I put in some flat colored shapes to match the background color and make it less distracting.

This view is zoomed 62.97% from actual pixels.

ACS/WFC F606W;CLEAR2L data was used.

North is 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.