Picture of the Day · NASA
PK 164 +31.1: The Headphone Nebula
2026-05-27
What is a pair of headphones doing in the sky? Today’s image features the Headphone Nebula, also known as PK 164 +31.1 or Jones-Emberson 1. This planetary nebula, the remnant of a dying Sun-like star, faintly occupies an angular region of the Lynx constellation about 1/5th the diameter of the full moon. The red and blue-ish green colors trace hydrogen and oxygen atoms, respectively, that have been excited and ionized by the nebula's central white dwarf. The headphone shape, where two lobes of hydrogen puncture the inner region of oxygen, adds this object to a long list of oddly shaped nebulae. The morphology of such strange nebulae hint at the presence of a stellar or planetary companion, which can stir the material flowing out from the dying star. You can listen to Hubble and JWST sonifications of planetary nebulae through your very own headphones!
via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovered by
- S. Belyavskyj
- Discovery site
- Simeiz Obs.
- Discovery date
- 5 April 1913
- Named after
- Nikolai Maltsov , (Russian amateur astronomer)
- Alternative designations
- A913 GD · 1950 JO, 1968 XA · 1913 RF
Article
749 Malzovia (prov. designation: A913 GD or 1913 RF) is a stony background asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) in diameter. It was discovered on 5 April 1913, by Russian astronomer Sergey Belyavsky at the Simeiz Observatory on the Crimean peninsula. The elongated S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 5.9 hours. It was named after Russian amateur astronomer Nikolai Maltsov (S. I. Maltsov) who founded the discovering Simeïs Observatory in 1900.
Orbit and classification