Helix Nebula
What is Helix Nebula?
Nebulae· Distance 650 ly. The nearest planetary nebula — the cast-off shell of a dying Sun-like star, lit by the white dwarf at its center so it looks like a giant eye, hence "Eye of God". Compare its size with the solar system on the size ladder.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Helix Nebula is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=helix nebula — location and time set automatically, no login.
Its place in the sky
A nebula, in the direction of Piscis Austrinus, spanning about 25 arcminutes of sky — 0.8 times the width of the full Moon.
Distance and scale
| Distance | ~650 ly |
|---|---|
| Size | ~2.5 ly across |
| Type | planetary nebula |
| Constellation | Aquarius |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Discovery and name
Found by Harding in 1824; its Hubble portrait earned it the name "Eye of God". The nearest planetary nebula.
Frequently asked
- How far is Helix Nebula from Earth?
- ~650 ly.
- What kind of object is Helix Nebula?
- planetary nebula.
- Where in the sky is Helix Nebula?
- In the direction of Piscis Austrinus.
- Where is Helix Nebula in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Tens of thousands of cometary knots
The inner ring of the Helix is not smooth. Enlarge the Hubble images and the ring's inner edge resolves into tens of thousands of droplets with heads and tails, all pointing at the centre. These "cometary knots" are dense clumps of gas each about the size of the solar system, their tails shaped by the light and wind of the central white dwarf pushing from behind. More than 20,000 are estimated, with a combined mass of a few Earths.
How the knots form is a long-standing question in planetary-nebula research. The favoured account has gas shed at different speeds colliding and going unstable, clumping as it does, and because the Helix is the nearest planetary nebula the structure was first seen clearly here. The Sun will shed the same kind of envelope in five billion years and form such knots, and whether today's Jupiter and Saturn survive inside it is a matter for calculation.
The nebula in depth
The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula about 650 light-years away, the closest of its kind to Earth. That is why it spans half the width of the full Moon on the sky, although its light is spread so thin that the surface brightness stays low. It looks like a single ring, but in three dimensions it is two disks crossing nearly at right angles.
At the center sits a white dwarf hotter than 100,000 K. Some ten thousand years ago the star finished its red-giant phase and blew its outer layers into space; the ring we see is that shell glowing in the star's light. Thousands of comet-shaped knots line the inner edge, each about the size of our solar system. The Sun will meet a similar end in five billion years.
In the Sky view, look in Aquarius in the autumn evening sky, northwest of Fomalhaut. At 7th magnitude it appears as a faint disk in binoculars under dark skies, and a wide-field telescope shows the ring. The Nearby Stars 3D view places the nebula at its true position within 650 light-years of the Sun.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.