Emerald Coast Science Center
Astronomy Photographs


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The Emerald Coast Science Center took all of these planetary and deep space photographs from its site in Miramar Beach near Destin. The science center is one of a very few science centers in the United States with the capability to take such Astro - photographs.

The pictures are not copyrighted so to download, simply right click and choose "Save Picture As" to place the photo into the files of your choice.


NGC 246 The Skull Nebula
This Emerald Coast Science Center recently took an image of a deep space object called NGC 246, nicknamed the "Skull Nebula. " This is what astronomers call a planetary nebula, and it lies about 1,600 light-years away in the constellation Cetus. Its central star only shines at 12th magnitude – that’s quite dim. What’s interesting about NGC 246 is that astronomers have known for at least fifty years that a planetary nebula interacts with the interstellar medium as it expands, which means that the rapidly moving gases on the nebula's leading edge, slow down and tightly compress as they collide with the interstellar medium. Meanwhile, gas clouds on the shell's trailing edge continue to expand freely. As this happens, the compressed gas up front gets very hot and unstable. The ring starts to come apart and fragment. The star at the heart of NGC 246 is part of a binary pair. The primary star has exhausted all of its nuclear fuel, and has become what astronomers call a white dwarf with a radius only a fraction of its original size (typically about the size of the earth).




The Pacman Nebula
This is an image shot with a Hydrogen Alpha filter which is very sensitive to the glowing hydrogen gas which in a color photo would be very red. This nebula is known to astronomers as NGC )New General Catalog) 281 or the PacMan Nebula. Its about 10 thousand light years away from us Earthlings in the Cassiopeia Constellation. Dark clouds of dust can easily be seen, obscuring the huge clouds of gas, thus creating the eyes and mouth of the computer PacMan. The engine lighting up the cloud is directly in the center in the form of a huge cluster of very bright young stars. Because the Milky Way is in the background, lots of stars are visible in the background and all around the gas cloud. If you were to go to some of the less light polluted spots in the local area and looked up at Cassiopeia, you would see the bright but raggedly string of the Milky way running right across that constellation and, or course, the PacMan.




The Pelican Nebula
This giant cloud of very hot hydrogen gas is another emission nebula taken in the last of October, 2008. At that time of year it was nearly overhead in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, very close to the bright star DENEB. This is a very popular nebula for astronomers to study because of the intensity of star formation and changing clouds on interstellar gas. Lots of very dense clumps of gas can be seen, forming in towers and filaments. 10 million years into the future, the slowly bulging clouds will look completely different, prompting our children's children to wonder why its called the Pelican. This beautiful nebula is about 2000 light years away and is about 30 light years wide.




Tadpole Nebula
The key star cluster of this picture, consisting of a small band of stars to the lower-left of center, is referred to as NGC 1893. The ultraviolet radiation produced by these stars powers the nebula. Atoms of hydrogen and other elements in the nebula emit their own light after being excited by this starlight raditation. Its very similar to the way a black light works. The gas cloud, or nebula, is known as IC 410, and is home to a pair of gaseous bubble-like structures astronomers call the "tadpoles." These are clumps of gas and dust left over from the formation of the cluster, and are likely forming yet new stars within them. The tails of the tadpoles are caused by the radiation pressure and solar wind from the stars of NGC1893. Notice how they are blown away from the star cluster above them by the cosmic winds.



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