Daily Telescope: Pumping up the volume with the Headphones nebula

Enlarge / A view of the “Headphones” nebula. (credit: Bill McLaughlin)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It is November 7, and today’s photo brings the “Headphones nebula” into brilliant clarity. The origin of this name seems rather obvious, no?

This is a planetary nebula, and I well remember studying these as an astronomy major decades ago. Why? Because the name is so damn confusing. Planetary nebula are formed when dying stars—including our own Sun one day—expand and form a glowing shell of ionized gas. They were given the name “planetary” nebula because, when first observed by astronomers about 250 years ago through rudimentary telescopes, they looked somewhat like planets.