The water fountain nebula:

The images of the Water-Fountain Nebula (which lies at an estimated distance of 6500 light years in the direction of Scorpius) shown here, were acquired using the adaptive optics (AO) technique, at two near-infrared wavelengths (using filters centered at wavelengths of 2.1 and 3.8 microns). The AO technique removes the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere and allows astronomers to take full advantage of large ground-based telescopes like the W. M. Keck Telescope, revealing important details which were hidden even to the sharp eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The images show two lobes, which are cavities (each of size about 2000 Astronomical Units) in an extended cloud of gas and dust, illuminated by light from a central star which lies between the two lobes, but is hidden from our view behind a dense, dust lane that separates the two lobes. These near-infrared AO images probe much deeper than HST into the two lobes of the Water-Fountain Nebula, showing a remarkable corkscrew-shaped structure (marked by dashed lines) apparently etched into the lobe walls.