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Helix was discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding before 1824.
The Helix Nebula is an example of a planetary nebula created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gases of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic that it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce .
Helix lies about 650 light-years away towards the constellation of Aquarius and spans about 2.5 light-years. Recent pictures of Helix are a composite of newly released images from the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope and wide-angle images from the Mosaic Camera on the WIYNWIYN Consortium consists of the University of Wisconsin (W), Indiana University (I), Yale University (Y), and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (N). The consortium operates two telescopes of 3. 9m diameters. The universities financed the constr 0.9-m Telescope at Kitt Peak National ObservatoryThe Kitt Peak National Observatory KPNO is located on a 6,875 ft peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona- Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O'odham Nation, 55 miles southwest of Tucson. The observatory is considered to be part of the National Optical Astr.