Helix Nebula

After rendering the Pleiades star cluster recently, I wanted to try to create another nebula in Photoshop. I decided to try my hand at the Helix Nebula, and once again, this image was painted entirely in Photoshop. I’m offering this as a stock image for anyone who wishes to use it, but please respect my many hours of work that went into producing this image and be sure to credit me. If you do use this, please credit me, link back to this page, and if you can drop me a note, I’d love to see what you did! Here is a link to a scene I used the Helix in: fav.me/d6kzlsq

I’ve also put together a short description of how I made this image up. This pseudo-tutorial “Creating the Helix Nebula in Adobe Photoshop” can be found here: fav.me/d6kv762.

The Helix nebula is a large planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius and is one of the closest to the Earth at 700 light-years. Its estimated age is about 10,500 years old, an age which is based on the measured expansion rate of 31 km/s. The Helix Nebula was the first planetary nebula discovered to contain cometary knots, all of which extend away from the central star in a radial direction. Excluding the tails, each is approximately the size of the Solar system. There are more than 20,000 of these structures in the Helix Nebula.

Conditions of use:
You can NOT use this image in any commissioned work or other commercial product without direct permission from me.
You CAN use this image in any deviations you want to make available as prints, provided they are only sold as deviant prints like most artists do here.
You MUST credit me and link back to either this or my main page from any deviation you use the image in.