APOD 1.3

The picture from 09/14/10 depicts an extraordinary spiral from LL Pegasi. It is related to a binary star in a olanetary nebula, which results from a late-life star whose outer layers have been repulsed and ionized by ultraviolet radiation. The abstract on the spiral referred to it as a series of semi-concentric circles, but it really is for all intents and purposes a spiral. A new layer of the spiral is formed about every 800 years, which actually seems like a fairly short time in astronomical terms. The spiral itself consists of one of the stars losing material. They say the spiral might glow because of light reflected from nearby stars, which sounds reasonable to me.