The Blue Snowball Nebula ... NGC 7663
(Click on Picture for larger view)

The Blue Snowball Nebula from Heavenly Backyard Astro The Blue Snowball Nebula from Heavenly Backyard Astro
Added December 16, 2019 ...
The Blue Snowball Nebula ... NGC 7662
This is only a 5 minute exposure that I took just after photographing Venus. Clouds began to roll in just as I started the exposure halting the session for the night, but this is such an interesting target, I decided to post it.

This planetary nebula is a star in its final phases with an inner shell and outer gaseous shells composed of mostly oxygen, hence the blue color. the distance is about 2,000 to 4,000 light-years away. The mother star, a very small white dwarf, is burning at an extremely high temperature of around 75,000°K, much hotter than our sun being at around 5,778°K making this one of the hottest stars in our galaxy. This would indicate that unlike our sun which generates its heat from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium, this star has consumed the hydrogen fuel and now must be fusing heavier elements producing carbon and oxygen and beyond. This process burns at those extremely high temperatures and giving the star very little time left before completely burning out.

I took this with the 11" Celestron telescope at f/10 setting and the Altair Hypercam 294C ProTEC camera. I plan to gather more time on this nebula once the sky clears.

Location: My Backyard, Savannah GA

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