Fleming 1 PN in Centaurus

Fleming 1 is an unusual planetary nebula situated in the Centaurus constellation. It has a pair of symmetrical jets spanning more than 2.8 parsec and delineated with a number of knots.
The jets and knots are moving away from the center of the nebula and were probably ejected 10,000 to 16,000 year ago. The innermost part of the nebula has a butterfly shape and is immersed into a faint halo.
New observations have shown that it is likely that a very rare pair of white dwarf stars lies at the heart of this object. The waist of the "butterfly" is surrounded by a torus of expanding hot gas forming the inner bright ellipse.
The distance to Fleming 1 is approx. 10,000 light-years.

Find more information on the bipolar jets here: http://www.space.com/18397-planetary-nebula-mystery-jets-fleming-1.html
Find an image of the ESO VLT here: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1244a/

Image data: Ha-O3-LRGB (480-360-140-120-120-120 min) total 22,3 h, north is down,
80cm f/7 Astrooptik Keller cassegrain, FLI PL-16803, Astrodon gen2 filters, Prompt 7 CTIO Chile

Processing: Konstantin Buchhold

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Last modified on Sunday, 02 June 2019 10:27

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