Stingray Nebula

The youngest known planetary nebula is the Stingray Nebula.

The Stingray Nebula is in Ara.

Although it is some 130 times the size of our solar system, the Stingray Nebula is only about 1/10 the size of most other known planetary nebulae.

As the nebula would be newly formed and very small, ground-based observations were not able to resolve it; so Bobrowsky observed it with the Hubble Space Telescope, discovering the nebula, which he named the "Stingray Nebula."

The image of the Stingray Nebula shown here shows how the outer shells of gas are collimating the continuing outflow of gas from the central star - an important observation, as the process of how these outflows become collimated has not been well understood.