99 Planetary Nebulas (2013)

Update 2014 June 20: Reading about Gomez’s Hamburger I now realize it’s not a planetary nebula. It’s actually a protoplanetary disk. Hooray! I wonder if more objects will change categories? For now, this is more accurately titled 99 Planetary Nebulas and a Protoplanetary Disk.

Update 2014 Feb 08: This work won the “favorite non-MIT entry” at MIT’s Art of Astrophysics competition. Click the link and check out the other winners and entries!

Inspired by insect illustration posters, this is a large collage of planetary nebulas I put together bit by bit as I processed them. All are presented north up and at apparent size relative to one another—I did not rotate or resize them in order to satisfy compositional aesthetics (if you spot any errors, let me know). Colors are aesthetic choices, especially since most planetary nebulas are imaged with narrowband filters.

How many of them can you identify?

Happy Holidays. :)

Various sizes are available at my Flickr gallery.

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.