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Using the large telescope in Chile, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) captured a new image of the frightening nebula, which looks like a skull floating in space. , About 1,600 light-years away in the constellation Cetus.
According to the US “Space” website, NGC 246 is a planetary nebula made up of a pair of closely related stars orbiting a third outer star.
The skull nebula
The nebula is the dusty remnant of a stellar explosion, during which a sun-like star squeezes out its outer layers, leaving behind a glowing white dwarf star.
This bright white dwarf is one of two stars that can be seen in the center of NGC 246, however, the white dwarf also has a dark red dwarf star which cannot be seen in the new ESO image.
These two stars revolve around each other like a binary pair, which in turn revolve around a third star at a distance of approximately 1900 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
These three stars establish NGC 246 as the first known planetary nebula with a three-star hierarchical system at its center.
The new image was also taken with the FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph 2 or FORS2, an instrument installed on Antu, one of the VLT telescopes at Paranal Observatory.
The new skull nebula shape shows clouds of blood-colored gas and dust that were left behind by the stellar explosion, and gases of hydrogen (red) and oxygen (light blue) in the nebula appear to glow, illuminating the face of the skull against the dark background of interstellar space.
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