The eye of God painted in deep space

Looks like an eye and not a very cheerful one but the photo is quite astonishing. The  blue pupil and the white of the eye are fringed by flesh-colored eyelids - but this so called eye is so big that if you were to travel with the speed of light you would need almost two and a half years to cross from one side to the other.

The eye is made from a shell of gas and dust that has been blown off by a faint central star. Our own solar system will meet a similar fate five billion years in the future and it will become the second eye ( the TechCurse prophecy- let it be known !!)

If you plan a visit , you’ll find it 700 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius, but now it can be seen with non sophisticated telescopes by amateur astronomers. Theycall it the Helix nebula. It is so big that it covers an area of sky around a quarter the size of the full moon.
The photo was taken using a giant telescope at the European Southern Observatory, high on a mountaintop at La Silla in Chile. It is so detailed that a close-up reveals distant galaxies within the central eyeball.

I see Starbuck !!

    Sphere It