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The Boomerang Nebula

The Boomerang Nebula

This image of the Boomerang Nebula was taken in 1998 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 instrument. Keith Taylor and Mike Scarrott called it the Boomerang Nebula in 1980 after observing it with a large ground-based telescope in Australia. Unable to see the detail that only Hubble can reveal, the astronomers saw merely a slight asymmetry in the nebula's lobes suggesting a curved shape like a boomerang. The high-resolution Hubble images indicate that 'the Bow Tie Nebula' would perhaps have been a better name. It shows faint arcs and ghostly filaments embedded within the diffuse gas of the nebula's smooth 'bow tie' lobes. The diffuse bow-tie shape of this nebula makes it quite different from other observed planetary nebulae, which normally have lobes that look more like 'bubbles' blown in the gas. However, the Boomerang Nebula is so young that it may not have had time to develop these structures. Why planetary nebulae have so many different shapes is still a mystery.

The general bow-tie shape of the Boomerang appears to have been created by a very fierce 500,000 kilometer-per-hour wind blowing ultracold gas away from the dying central star. The star has been losing as much as one-thousandth of a solar mass of material per year for 1,500 years. This is 10 to 100 times more than in other similar objects.

About the Object

  • R.A. Position
    R.A. PositionRight ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.
    12h 44m 46.09s
  • Dec. Position
    Dec. PositionDeclination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.
    -54° 31' 12.0"
  • Constellation
    ConstellationOne of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears.
    Centaurus
  • Distance
    DistanceThe physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
    About 5,000 light-years (1,500 parsecs)
  • Dimensions
    DimensionsThe physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky.
    The nebula has a semi-major axis of roughly 1 light-year (or 0.3 parsecs).

About the Data

  • Instrument
    InstrumentThe science instrument used to produce the data.
    HST>WFPC2
  • Exposure Dates
    Exposure DatesThe date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
    1998
  • Object Name
    Object NameA name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
    Boomerang Nebula
  • Object Description
    Object DescriptionThe type of astronomical object.
    Bipolar Reflection Nebula
  • Release Date
    September 13, 2005
  • Science Release
    Hubble Catches Scattered Light from the Boomerang Nebula
  • Credit
    NASA, ESA, R. Sahai and J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and the WFPC2 Science Team

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Details

Last Updated
Mar 28, 2025
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov