Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), WFPC2 science team, NASAClick to embiggen.
Of all the many space photos that Wired has posted as Space Photo of the Day, this one is surely the most existentially terrifying. Apparently the MyCn18 nebula is watching your ass, and it saw what you did, and it’s pretty disgusted.
Wired reports that this Hubble photo is interesting because of what it can tell us about how hourglass nebulae like this one are formed:
The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter that accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. According to one theory on the formation of planetary nebulae, the hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud, which is denser near its equator than near its poles.
But we suspect they’re just covering up the real significance of the photo, which is obviously the fact that it proves the existence of Space Sauron. Or possibly the Ceiling Cat to end all Ceiling Cats.
