SNR G179.0+2.6, popularly known as the Buckyball Nebula, is a large, extremely faint supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Auriga. Expanding as a round, soccer-ball-like shell of gas and stellar debris from a massive star explosion estimated to have occurred roughly 50,000 years ago, it spans an apparent diameter of about 70 arcminutes in the sky—over twice the angular size of the full Moon. Although the remnant consists of hydrogen and helium, its visual appearance in deep-sky astrophotography is heavily dominated by doubly ionized oxygen [O III] emissions, which give its delicate filamentary structures a distinct bluish-green hue that requires specialized long-exposure narrowband imaging to capture.
SNR G179.0+2.6, popularly known as the Buckyball Nebula, is a large, extremely faint supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Auriga. Expanding as a round, soccer-ball-like shell of gas and stellar debris from a massive star explosion estimated to have occurred roughly 50,000 years ago, it spans an apparent diameter of about 70 arcminutes in the sky—over twice the angular size of the full Moon. Although the remnant consists of hydrogen and helium, its visual appearance in deep-sky astrophotography is heavily dominated by doubly ionized oxygen [O III] emissions, which give its delicate filamentary structures a distinct bluish-green hue that requires specialized long-exposure narrowband imaging to capture.