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Gyulbudaghian's Nebula (also known as GN 20.45.4, GM 1-29, and HH 215) is the small fan-shaped nebula in the upper left of this image. The dim brownish emission nebula spreading through most of the image is known as LBN 468; the dark nebula at the center and below center is LDN 1158, while the dark arc in the upper right corner is LDN 1157. Gyulbudaghian's Nebula is remarkable for the fact that it changes in shape and appearance very rapidly (by astronomical standards), with noticeable differences being apparent over time spans as short as a year. It is a Herbig-Haro object and so, like all HH objects, consists of two jets of material being ejected from a star in opposite directions. The bright fan-shaped jet pointing upward is the main thing we see because the other, downward, jet of material is mostly blocked from our sight by the dark nebula - but it is still faintly visible as a dim plume pointing down. This is an LRGB image with 90:30:30:30 minutes of exposure.

A Note on the Correct Pronunciation of "Gyulbudaghian"

Gyulbudaghian's Nebula is named for its discoverer, Armen Gyulbudaghian, an Armenian astronomer who identified the nebula in 1977 and who currently (2014) works at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory. See, for example, this page, where Dr. Gyulbudaghian's name is the eighth one in the large middle section of the table. Wondering how to correctly pronounce the name of this nebula I searched around online and in various print sources (for example, Michael Bakich gives a pronunciation on page 294 of his excellent book "1001 Celestial Wonders To See Before You Die"). Every example I could find was wrong, usually extremely so; for example, the pronunciation suggested by Bakich contains five errors, with only the first syllable given correctly.

Most of the incorrect attempts to pronounce "Gyulbudaghian" result, I suspect, from starting with its romanisation rather than the original name in the Armenian alphabet (which is given on the BAO page linked to above). It is easy to be misled by the romanisation, because the "French r" sound that occurs in Armenian - and in Dr. Gyulbudaghian's name - is usually romanised as "gh", which to most readers does not suggest the correct sound. Starting with the Armenian spelling and consulting with a linguist and two native speakers of Armenian I learned that the correct pronunciation is "gyool-boo-da(r)-YAN", where (r) is the "French r" sound, as in "merci", and both a's are pronounced like the word "ah". Note that the stress is on the final syllable.

I hope this little note helps to popularize the correct pronunciation of this interesting nebula. Thanks to linguist Tristan Miller and Armenian speakers Karine Gabrielyan and Stella Gevorgyan-Ninness for providing the expertise which led to this result.