中文翻譯:
在遙遠的宇宙中，有一個神秘的地方叫做Pillow Nebula（枕頭星雲）和Flying Carpet Nebula（飛地毯星雲），它的正式名稱是NGC 7027。這是已知最小、最亮和形狀最奇特的行星星雲之一。它的氣體和塵埃正在快速擴展，從地球上看，大約在600年前就開始擴散了。從過去的資料中，這個星雲不斷釋放出藍色的殼層，但最近卻開始朝著特定方向噴出棕色的氣體和塵埃，這樣的變化讓它出現了四個角落的全新形狀。至於星雲中心的秘密，人們還不知道。有一個猜測認為，這裡可能有一對近距離的雙星系統，其中一顆星星將氣體傳送到另一顆星星周圍的奇形怪狀的圓盤上。NGC 7027距離地球大約3000光年，於1878年首次被發現，方向在天鵝座（Cygnus），甚至用普通的後院望遠鏡也可以看到哦！
原文:
What created this unusual planetary nebula? Dubbed the Pillow Nebula and the Flying Carpet Nebula, NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebulas known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027 first started expanding, as visible from Earth, about 600 years ago. For much of its history, the planetary nebula has been expelling shells, as seen in blue in the featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope. In modern times, though, for reasons unknown, it began ejecting gas and dust (seen in brown) in specific directions that created a new pattern that seems to have four corners. What lies at the nebula’s center is unknown, with one hypothesis holding it to be a close binary star system where one star sheds gas onto an erratic disk orbiting the other star. NGC 7027, about 3,000 light years away, was first discovered in 1878 and can be seen with a standard backyard telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).
來源:NASA每日圖片
