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
- Auguste Charlois
- Discovery date
- 21 March 1893
- Pronunciation
- / ˈ k ɔːr dj ʊ b ə /
- Named after
- Possibly Córdoba, Spain
- Alternative designations
- 1893 V
- Minor planet category
- Main belt
- Observation arc
- 117.96 yr (43084 d)
- Aphelion
- 3.2417 AU (484.95 Gm )
- Perihelion
- 2.36078 AU (353.168 Gm)
- Semi major axis
- 2.80122 AU (419.057 Gm)
- Orbital period sidereal
- 4.69 yr (1712.5 d )
- Mean anomaly
- 233.78 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 12 36.792 / day
Article
365 Corduba is a very large main-belt asteroid that was discovered by the French astronomer Auguste Charlois on 21 March 1893 from Nice. It is classified as a C-type asteroid and is probably composed of carbonaceous material.
Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, during 2007 gave a light curve with a period of 6.551 ± 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.05 in magnitude. This differs somewhat from a 2004 study that gave a period of 6.354 hours, but this difference may be explained by the small magnitude variation which tends to increase the randomizing effect of noise in the data.