Released by the European Southern Observatory on the eve of Halloween, the ‘Skull Nebula’ is floating through space around 1,600 light years away from us.
Known as NGC 246, the nebula is well known for being associated with a pair of closely-bound stars orbiting a third. The swirling pink and red cosmic dust gives the nebula a bloodshot and very Halloween-appropriate look. This image was taken by the FORS 2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert.Even though this nebula has been known for centuries, only in 2014 did astronomers discover, using ESO’s VLT, that the white dwarf and its companion are concealing a third star situated at the heart of the Skull Nebula.This star, which is not visible in this image, is a dim red dwarf that sits close to the white dwarf at about 500 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Can you spot the ð? This Halloween ð, we are sharing with you an ethereal remnant of a long dead star, nestled in the belly of The Whale, that bears an uneasy resemblance to a skull floating through space.
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