Cosmic Fireworks Display Seen Inside Helix Nebula

goran72 writes "A new image, taken with an infrared camera on the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, has revealed a cosmic fireworks display, in the form of tens of thousands of previously unseen comet-shaped knots inside the Helix Nebula. Unlike previous optical images of the Helix Nebula knots, the infrared image shows thousands of clearly resolved knots, extending out from the central star at greater distances than previously observed. These images enable astronomers to estimate that there may be as many as 40,000 knots in the entire nebula, each of which are billions of kilometers/miles across. Their total mass may be as much as 30,000 Earths, or one-tenth the mass of our Sun."

I still insist that...

[The Pirou]

The French do it better. This amateur Helix Nebula is just slapping together any old 'exposed inner core' with another 'exposed inner core' over 10,000 to 1,000,000 years to illuminate ejected material. Where's the precision in that?

The Helix Datacenter

[Anonymous Coward]

A new image, taken with an infrared camera on the Slashdot Telescope on SourceForge, has revealed a cosmic fireworks display, in the form of tens of thousands of sparks flying from the NAOJ.org hosting site. Unlike previous optical images of the hosting site, the infrared image shows thousands of clearly resolved sparks, extending out from the central rack at greater distances than previously observed. These images enable sysadmins to estimate that there may be as many as 40,000 sparks in the entire datacenter, each of which is several inches long. Their total heat may be as much as 30,000 hits per second, or one-tenth the power of a Sun Fire E10K.