A Cosmic Necklace Larger than a Solar System

The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) detector onboard Hubble was used to observe the Necklace Nebula on July 2, 2011. Hubble's WFC3 broadband filters, which show the colors of the galactic field stars, were used along with narrowband filters that show emission from the gases that make up the planetary nebula. In this composite image, ionized hydrogen gas is shown in blue, oxygen gas in green, and nitrogen gas in red. The field stars appear mainly white, with a reddish tint, which is indicative of the older population stars that make up the disk of our Milky Way galaxy.

About the colours

This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the WFC3/UVIS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using six different filters, three broadband filters, and three narrowband filters. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F502N ([O III]) + F438W (B) Green: F656N (H-alpha) + F555W (V) Red: F658N ([N II]) + F814W (I)

About the data

This image was created from HST data from proposal 12675 : K. Noll, Z. Levay, M. Livio, C. Christian, H. Bond, L. Frattare, M. Mutchler, T. Borders, and W. Januszewski (Hubble Heritage Team/STScI).