NGC 7027 is a young, dense planetary nebula in Cygnus, a dying star’s freshly shed envelope and the place where helium hydride was first found in space.
At a glance
| type | nebula |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 1,750 light-years (537 pc) |
| its light left it | 1,750 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 0.13 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About NGC 7027
NGC 7027 is a planetary nebula: the outer layers of a Sun-like star, thrown off at the end of its life and lit up by the exposed hot core. Compared with most planetary nebulae it is compact, bright and young, caught early in the process, and its central star is among the hottest stellar cores known. In a small telescope it is only a tiny bluish dot, but it is one of the brightest planetary nebulae in the sky at radio and infrared wavelengths.
Its gas is rich in carbon, dust and molecules, which makes it a favourite target for astrochemistry. The airborne SOFIA observatory detected helium hydride in it, the molecule thought to have been the first to form in the young universe and one that had been sought in space for a long time. Images from Hubble show nested shells and a dusty, multi-polar structure, the record of how the star shed its mass.
What you see in the piece
In the piece it is a tiny knot of glowing gas drawn at its modelled size, far smaller than the gap between neighbouring stars. From any distance it is a point; only flown to does it open into a small cloud.
Measured or modelled
Its outline in the piece is a symmetric cloud at the modelled size; the real nebula’s shells and lobes are not reproduced.
Questions
What was discovered in NGC 7027?
Helium hydride, the first kind of molecule to form after the Big Bang, was detected in space for the first time in NGC 7027.
How far away is NGC 7027?
NGC 7027 is 1,750 light-years (537 pc) from the Sun.