Best Southern Sky
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The Carina Nebula, formally NGC 3372, is a massive emission nebula situated approximately 7,500 light-years from Earth in the southern sky. It’s notable for its extreme luminosity and serves as the home of Eta Carinae, one of the most powerful and volatile stars known. Astronomers and researchers st...
A bright southern planetary nebula in Vela about 2,000 light-years away, also called the Southern Ring Nebula, notable for its clearly resolvable central white dwarf star.
A small emission nebula embedded in the larger Carina Nebula complex, featuring dramatic gas and dust pillars captured in widely reproduced Hubble Space Telescope imagery released in 2012.
An emission nebula in Canis Major spanning about 30 light-years, shaped by fierce stellar winds from the central Wolf-Rayet star WR 7 pushing into surrounding interstellar gas.
Emission nebula in Canis Major ~15,000 light-years distant, sculpted by the powerful stellar winds of Wolf-Rayet star WR 7 into a bubble flanked by bright arcs resembling a horned helmet.
Emission nebula in Canis Major roughly 15,000 light-years away, shaped by stellar winds from central Wolf-Rayet star WR 7 into a distinctive helmet-with-wings form.
An emission nebula in Ara sculpted by the young open cluster NGC 6193, whose stellar winds and UV radiation carve towering gas pillars resembling a pair of battling dragons.
A narrow, bright filament within the Vela supernova remnant about 815 light-years away, formed where the ancient blast wave collides with denser surrounding gas, producing its pencil-like shape.
An emission nebula in Scorpius about 8,000 light-years away, hosting the massive young star cluster Pismis 24, one of the most luminous stellar groupings in the Milky Way.
An active star-forming emission nebula in Scorpius about 5,500 light-years away, containing numerous protostars and dense molecular clouds making it one of the most productive stellar nurseries nearby.
A complex bipolar planetary nebula in Musca about 1,800 light-years away, notable for its unusual S-shaped morphology produced by a precessing bipolar outflow from its central binary system.
The youngest confirmed planetary nebula, located in Ara, observed to have developed its nebular features between 1971 and the 1990s when Hubble Space Telescope first imaged it.
An emission nebula in Centaurus about 6,500 light-years away, notable for containing Thackeray's Globules, dark dense clouds studied as candidate sites of ongoing triggered star formation.
A large emission nebula in Scorpius spanning roughly 250 light-years, located about 6,000 light-years away and almost entirely invisible to the unaided eye due to its faint hydrogen-alpha emission.
A bipolar planetary nebula in Lupus that appears rectangular from Earth but is actually a cylinder of gas and dust, with a hot central white dwarf ionizing its interior walls.
A bipolar planetary nebula in Lupus that appears nearly rectangular when viewed edge-on, with parallel dust lanes crossing its interior creating a distinctive retina-like pattern.
A bright planetary nebula in Eridanus discovered by William Herschel in 1785, featuring a vivid inner disk encircled by a fainter outer shell that resembles a stylized eye.
A bright planetary nebula in Centaurus roughly 4,900 light-years away, nicknamed the Blue Planetary by John Herschel for its intense blue color and remarkably uniform circular disk.
A supernova remnant in Centaurus containing pulsar PSR B1509-58, whose Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows extended emission strikingly shaped like a human hand.
A large oval planetary nebula in Fornax about 978 light-years away, notable for its smooth elliptical shell and relative proximity, making it one of the nearer planetaries to the solar system.
A planetary nebula in Sagittarius roughly 6,000 light-years away, notable for its bright inner shell surrounded by a fainter outer envelope clearly revealed in deep Hubble Space Telescope images.
A biconical reflection nebula in Carina surrounding the evolved red giant HD 65750, named for its resemblance to a traditional toby jug ceramic drinking vessel.
A bipolar protoplanetary nebula in Puppis named for its unusually high sulfur compound content, with opposing gas jets expanding at over 400 km/s into the surrounding interstellar medium.
A young oxygen-rich supernova remnant in Centaurus and one of only three such remnants confirmed in the Milky Way, notable for fast-moving ejecta and a central pulsar wind nebula.
A large planetary nebula in Grus expanding at roughly 50 km/s, making it one of the fastest-expanding planetary nebulae known and giving it a thin, tyre-like appearance.
