December 31, 1997
The cosmos has been expanding since the beginning of time, making room for galaxies, for stars, for planets — and ultimately, for you.
NGC 5307: A Symmetric Planetary Nebula
Birthday · December 31, 1997
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APOD published December 31, 1997. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Some stellar nebulae are strangely symmetric. For example, every major blob of gas visible on the upper left of NGC 5307 appears to have a counterpart on the lower right. This picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope was released last week. NGC 5307 is an example of a planetary nebula with a spiral shape. Spiral planetary nebulae are thought to be caused by a bright central white dwarf star expelling a symmetric wobbling jet of rapidly moving gas. It takes light about 10,000 years to reach us from NGC 5307, and about 6 months just to go from one side to the other. In contrast, light takes only about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun.