A newly enlarged image of the Helix Nebula brings a festive touch to the fourth anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This spectacular object, a dying star fading into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers. Spitzer mapped the vast outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula and probed the inner region around the central dead star to reveal what appears to be a planetary system that survived the chaotic death throes of the star.
#propeller #nebula #infrared #spitzertelescope

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Hora (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

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