Since June 16, 1995, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has posted a cosmological image on its Astronomy Picture of the Day web page. Today’s image (August 26, 2013) is of one of the brightest nebulae in the universe, called nebula NGC 7027. The nebula was discovered in 1878, and can be viewed in the direction of the Cygnus constellation with a standard conventional telescope. Due to the nebula’s apparently indistinct features that appear using traditional telescopes, the nebula is rarely ever referred to by a descriptive moniker – such as Crab, Horsehead, Hourglass, and the like.
The gas and dust cloud is peculiarly massive, containing approximately three times the mass of our own Sun.
