Chandra Release - November 12, 2020

Visual Description: IC 4593

The image features a planetary nebula named IC 4593, which is a type of celestial object that results from the final stages of a sun-like star's life. The nebula is purple in color at the center, fading out to pink with pops of bright green at the edge. It has a circular though irregular shape. The image of IC 4593 has X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory colored in purple, invoking similarities to amethysts found in geodes around the globe. The bubble detected by Chandra is from gas that has been heated to over a million degrees. These high temperatures were likely generated by material that blew away from the shrunken core of the star and crashed into gas that had previously been ejected by the star. This composite image also contains visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope (pink and green). The pink regions in the Hubble image are the overlap of emission from cooler gas composed of a combination of nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, while the green emission is mainly from nitrogen.