Hubble: The last picture of the old camera

Just before Hubble's Wide Field Camera #2 returns to some museum on Earth, the Hubble Heritage Project took a spectacular image of a planetary nebula

Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (Wide Field Planetary Camera 2), which was the telescope's main workhorse, is currently being replaced by the Atlantis shuttle crew with the new Wide Field Planetary Camera 3.

As a tribute to the old camera, the telescope's scientific team decided to publish a spectacular photo taken on May 4, 2009, just a few days before the upgrade operation. This is an image of a planetary nebula known as Kohoutek 4-55 (or K 4-55 for short). The image is the latest celebration of the camera that provided spectacular photographs and scientific findings about the universe.

K 4-55 is nearly 4,600 light-years away in the direction of the Cygnus constellation. It is one of a series of planetary nebulae named after Magellan, the Czech astronomer Lobus Kohotek. A planetary nebula contains the upper layers of a red giant type star that spread out into interstellar space when the star was in the final stages of its life. Ultraviolet radiation emitted from the hot core of the star left behind ionizes the ejected gas shell and causes it to glow.

In the specific case of K 4-55, a bright inner ring surrounds the bipolar structure. The whole system is surrounded by a red halo, which is visible in the picture and which is caused by the nitrogen gas. The multishell structure is quite rare in planetary nebulae.
The colors represent the composition of the various emission clouds in the nebula. Red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen and blue represents oxygen. This image was taken as mentioned by the Planetary/Wide Field Camera #2 on May 4, 2009. The scientific and inspirational legacy of the camera will be felt by astronomers and the general public, as long as the story of the Hubble Space Telescope continues to resonate.