Starship Asterisk*

Whenever I see a photo of a planetary nebula I always come up with the same question. Is there any way to determine if the geometry presented in the photo is unique to our view (from Earth) or is it the case if you could 'swing-around' the planetary nebula to some other viewing angle you would get a...

This picture is widely know for its Pareidolia content, and as I recall there was a 'zoom-in-movie' made of it that highlighted that content. Additionally Phil Plait posted a good comment about this: "http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html"