Humason 2-1 (2014)

One of the three planetary nebulas discovered by M. L. Humason during his time at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Any aspiring astronomer should read that short Wiki article at the link.

Here, the swirling, vaguely symmetrical nebula is seen in detail with two narrowband filters (F658N & F656N). The broad, blueish dots arranged in the X shape are simply diffuse diffraction spikes and are not part of the nebula itself. The central star is just discernible.

The image has been enlarged 200% from its original size.

These data were collected for Proposal 6347, A Search for Jets in Planetary Nebulae

Red: hst_06347_08_wfpc2_f658n_pc_drz
Green: Pseudo
Blue: hst_06347_09_wfpc2_f656n_pc_drz

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.