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NASA Spitzer Space Telescope • Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• California Institute of Technology
• Vision for Space Exploration
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Double Helix Nebula
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Morris (UCLA)

Double Helix Nebula

The double helix nebula. The spots are infrared-luminous stars, mostly red giants and red supergiants. Many other stars are present in this region, but are too dim to appear even in this sensitive infrared image.

The double helix nebula is approximately 300 light-years from the enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way. (The Earth is more than 25,000 light-years from the black hole at the galactic center.)

This false-color image was taken by the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS).

To download, choose your preferred resolution and file format below. "High-Resolution" files will always the highest resolution and widest crop available, intended for print. Other resolutions are provided for convenient on-screen viewing.

Screen-Resolution (373x450) JPEG (48 KB)
Medium-Resolution (746x900): JPEG (108 KB)
High-Resolution (829x1000): JPEG (528 KB) | Mac TIFF (1 MB) | PC TIFF (1 MB)

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The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website is maintained by the Spitzer Science Center, located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.

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