The Wildlife Oculus

IC 417 - Spider Nebula Tuesday night brought one of those welcome breaks in the Welsh weather. With clear skies settling over Pontypool , it felt like the perfect opportunity to get the Dwarf 3 digital telescope outside and pointed at something a little more unusual. My target for the evening was the intriguing Spider Nebula . Astrophotographers often use the nickname “Spider Nebula” for the planetary nebula IC 417 , sometimes also associated with similar spider-like filamentary nebulae in astrophotography circles because of their distinctive, leg-like structures spreading outward from the centre. Despite its delicate appearance, the Spider Nebula is the aftermath of a violent stellar death. It lies roughly 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Auriga , in a region rich with gas and star formation. What we see today is the glowing debris from a massive star that shed its outer layers into space. Ultraviolet radiation from nearby young stars excites the surrounding hydrogen ga...