Space Oddity Tues. Hubble Captures Eye-like Galactic Weirdo Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope recently released a striking new image of a planetary nebula, or dying star, called NGC 6751 in the constellation Aquila. Resembling a glowing eye, the nebula was found to be 6,500 light-years away from Earth in a far region of the Milky Way galaxy. Its discovery is helping astronomers map stars in our home galaxy and understand the eventual fate of our own sun.
Planetary nebulas are big, bright clouds of gas and dust that puff out from an exploding, dying sun.
They are so named not because they have anything to do with planets, but because of their round shape. Astronomers are learning a great deal about planetary nebulas at the edge of our galaxy and beyond. But interestingly, they lack some important data about nebulas in our own Milky Way. Hajian decided to remedy this problem by measuring the distances to 30 stellar objects viewed through the Hubble Space Telescope. Comparing before and after images of the same object gives astronomers a good idea of the angle and velocity at which the nebula is expanding.