SOFIA Observations of the Planetary Nebula NGC7027

NGC7027 is one of the brightest and best-studied planetary nebulae. The nebula is 2900 light years from earth, and approximately 0.08 parsec in physical size making it one of the youngest known planetary nebula with an estimated age of just 600 years. NGC7027’s central 16th magnitude star is pumping out the energy of 6000 suns, and at 185,000 Kelvin the star is one of the hottest known. NGC7027 was imaged using the FORCAST instrument on SOFIA at 6.4, 6.6, 11.1, 19.7, 24.2, 33.6, and 37.1 microns. The HBPW of the measurements is 4-to-6 pixels 3 to 4.5 arc sec] across the bands. Analysis indicates a bright well-resolved nebula with an overall angular size of ~10 X 13 arc sec. The morphology is similar to what is seen in ground-based infrared and radio continuum images. The size varies little with wavelength. The SED derived from the SOFIA observations varies moderately but systematically across the nebula, with the longer wavelengths becoming relatively brighter at the edges. Analysis of the images has been carried out under the NASA-IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program with portions of the work being carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA.