Planetary Nebula NGC 2899

This video zooms across 6,500 light-years through a star-studding field to visit the planetary nebula NGC 2899, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula has a diagonal bipolar structure formed by a cylindrical-shaped outflow of hot gasses and radiation from the central star – a blazingly hot white dwarf. The colors are from glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The video zooms up on a forest of stalagmite-shaped features that are being eroded away by the energy from the sizzling white dwarf. They point back to the star’s central location. The stalks lie along the inner edge of a doughnut-shaped torus of gas and dust partially encircling the star. The stars in the visualization are presented in their approximate 3D locations in space as mapped from various sky surveys: Gaia, Hipparcos, Yale, and Gliese star catalogs.