New Hubble Images of “Dumbbell Nebula”

Via Space.com, comes this story about the new Hubble images of the Dumbbell Nebula. The Dumbbell nebula, in our own Milky Way Galaxy, is a planetary nebula, named thusly because early telescope quality made even nebulae like this one ( the first ever discovered by Charles Messier in 1764) look like the fuzzy blobs of our own solar system’s planets. The gas and dust of this nebula are what’s lefft of a dying star, after it’s cast off the outer matter. The nebula, which looks a bit like a dumbell in ordinary non-Hubble images, is officially known as Messier 27 (M27). You might want to take a look at the rendered video’s here as well, available in high and low bandwidth versions.

You might also want to think back to this image of a star being born in galaxy M16.