Photo #2 (May 2007)

DUST AND THE HELIX NEBULA 

This is the history of the Western conquest of the planet and now what’s got to happen, unless we’re going to blow this thing to smithereens, is the Western recognition that other people had it before we got it, namely, that gods are personifications of powers that are in you in the universe and not simply out there or up there.  This is what I see as the problem of the Western religiosity and mentality in relation to the modern world.
            - Joseph Campbell, This Business Gods 1989, p. 41-2

Dust makes this cosmic eye look red. The eerie Spitzer Space Telescope image shows infrared radiation from the well-studied Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) a mere 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. The two light-year diameter shroud of dust and gas around a central white dwarf has long been considered an excellent example of a planetary nebula, representing the final stages in the evolution of a sun-like star. But the Spitzer data show the nebula's central star itself is immersed in a surprisingly bright infrared glow. Models suggest the glow is produced by a dust debris disk. Even though the nebular material was ejected from the star many thousands of years ago, the close-in dust could be generated by collisions in a reservoir of objects analogous to our own solar system's Kuiper Belt or cometary Oort cloud. Formed in the distant planetary system, the comet-like bodies have otherwise survived even the dramatic late stages of the star's evolution.