planetary nebulae – Astronomy Now

Looking into the dusty shroud of a dying star

31 October 2021 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope provides an intriguing Halloween view of the dusty shroud enveloping a carbon-rich star burning through the last of its nuclear fuel.

Previewing the Sun’s fate: a white dwarf blazing in the colourful shroud of a planetary nebula

10 September 2020 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope’s view of a colourful planetary nebula 4,000 light years away previews the fate of the Sun, showing a hot white dwarf illuminating the blown-off outer layers of its atmosphere.

“Space Butterfly” in Vela offers remarkable view of twin-lobed planetary nebula

7 August 2020 Astronomy Now

ESO’s Very Large Telescope captures a colourful view of an unusual bipolar planetary nebula resembling a vast butterfly stretching up to four light years across in the southern constellation Vela.

Hubble camera captures stunning new views of stars gone ‘haywire’

20 June 2020 Astronomy Now

New Hubble Space Telescope images of well-studied planetary nebulae reveal fast-changing structures and shed new light on how some stars go “haywire” near the ends of their lives, throwing off spectacular clouds and jets as they run out of nuclear fuel.

Showing what’s to come when the Sun grows old

19 August 2019 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope provides a look into the Sun’s future, imaging a planetary nebula in Orion that shows what happens when a star burns through its nuclear fuel in old age.

Hubble marks 29th anniversary with remarkable view of Southern Crab

18 April 2019 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope celebrates its 29th anniversary on 24 April, an event NASA is marking by the release of a spectacular image of the Southern Crab Nebula in the constellation Centaurus that shows dual cones of gas blown off by a central red giant streaming away into space and giving the appearance of a crab floating in the void.

Supernovae not needed for at least some heavy isotopes

31 December 2018 Astronomy Now

New research suggesgs low-mass stars can cook up heavy elements, helping explain the observed abundance of some heavy isotopes.

Giant ‘cannonballs’ seen shooting from binary-star system

7 October 2016 Astronomy Now

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has detected superhot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as the planet Mars, being ejected near a dying red giant star in the V Hydrae binary system. The plasma balls are zooming so fast through space it would take only 30 minutes for them to travel from Earth to the Moon.

Hubble reveals a cosmic trick of the eye

6 April 2016 Astronomy Now

While truly massive stars go out in a blaze of glory, intermediate-mass stars — those between roughly one and eight times the mass of the Sun — are somewhat quieter. Such stars eventually form cosmic objects known as planetary nebulae, so named because of their vague resemblance to planets when seen through early, low-resolution telescopes.

“Planetary Nebulae” receive more meaningful physical presence

22 November 2015 Astronomy Now

Despite their name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. They were described as such by early astronomers whose telescopes showed them as glowing disc-like objects, but we now know that they represent the final stage of activity of stars like our Sun. A way of estimating more accurate distances to planetary nebulae dispersed across our Galaxy has just been announced.