All articles tagged with #planetary nebula
NASA's Spitzer infrared image captures the Helix nebula, a 700 light-years away planetary nebula—the glowing shell of a sun-like star—with a central white dwarf and a dusty disk likely kicked up by comets that survived the star's death; the finding shows how comets can endure and be redistributed as stars end their lives, and notes that our Sun will form a similar nebula in about five billion years.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument images the planetary nebula Tc 1, revealing buckyballs arranged in a thin hollow shell around the central star and enabling exact chemical mapping through integral field unit spectroscopy. This builds on the 2010 Spitzer discovery led by Jan Cami, offering new clues about how these carbon-based molecules form and persist in space, and highlighting a surprising, spiral-like structure and a mysterious inverted question-mark feature in Tc 1.
Astronomers combined Hubble’s high-resolution view of the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) with Euclid’s wide-field imaging to study the dying star’s final acts. The close-up reveals intricate gas bubbles, rings, jets and knots around the central star, while Euclid shows faint arcs and delicate filaments in the surrounding environment, together offering a cinematic, multi-scale portrait of a planetary nebula’s final stages.
Hubble and Euclid captured a detailed view of the Cat's Eye Nebula, showing how a star ends its life as a planetary nebula: Hubble zoomed in on the central shell while Euclid provided a wider halo view, with background galaxies highlighting the nebula's place in the universe.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures two infrared views of the brain-shaped planetary nebula PMR 1, nicknamed the Exposed Cranium, showing a glowing outer shell and a dark central lane. The dual images (NIRCam and MIRI) reveal complex gas and dust from a dying star in the Vela constellation, illustrating the star’s final ejection before it either becomes a white dwarf or, less likely, explodes as a supernova.
The James Webb Space Telescope provides high‑resolution infrared views of PMR 1, the Exposed Cranium Nebula about 5,000 light‑years away in Vela. Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI imaging reveal a brain‑like structure of inner gases surrounded by a thinner hydrogen shell, with a split that may be caused by polar jets from the dying star. The central star’s nature remains uncertain: it was once considered a Wolf–Rayet type, but this is not confirmed, leaving PMR 1’s true identity—possibly a planetary nebula around a sun‑like star or a Wolf–Rayet remnant—open to interpretation.
Astronomers using the WEAVE instrument on the William Herschel Telescope have found a giant, straight bar of ionized iron at the center of the Ring Nebula, a first for a nebula. The iron bar is unusually massive and not explained by a jet from the white dwarf or by iron release from dust; its 3D shape could extend beyond our line of sight, and a torn-apart planet origin is unlikely. More observations of other nebulae are needed to uncover the iron's origin.
The James Webb Space Telescope captured a detailed image of the Helix Nebula, a nearby planetary nebula nicknamed the Eye of God, revealing comet-like knots and gas transitions as a dying sun-like star sheds its outer layers and seeds the galaxy with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen—the building blocks of life.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures a sharp close-up of the Helix Nebula, a planetary nebula about 650 light-years away formed when a Sun-like star shed its outer layers and left a white dwarf at its center; Webb’s infrared view reveals hot gas and cooler dust, illustrating how dying stars recycle heavier elements into the cosmos and seed future planets, with binary interactions potentially triggering novae.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope delivers a sharper infrared view of the Helix Nebula, the nearby planetary nebula nicknamed the Eye of Sauron, revealing about 40,000 cometary knots as the dying star sheds its outer layers. The image, updating Hubble's famed portrait, shows how the gas glows under the nebula’s radiation and how the knots persist against the expanding wind. The Helix lies ~650 light-years away and will fade over the next 10,000–20,000 years as the gas disperses, offering a glimpse of the Sun's eventual fate as a red giant that becomes a white dwarf.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have released a highly detailed infrared image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a nearby planetary nebula nicknamed the Eye of God. The image shows hot gas winds from a dying star colliding with older shells of gas and dust, revealing comet-like knots and layered structures, and offering a glimpse of our Sun’s distant future as well as the potential for planet formation in the surrounding dust.
Using the WEAVE instrument in the Canary Islands, astronomers mapped the Ring Nebula (M57) and discovered a rare, 3.7 trillion‑mile‑long bar of ionized iron spanning its interior, containing as much iron as Earth’s molten core. The origin is unknown—potentially the vaporized remains of a rocky planet or a product of nebular processes—and researchers plan further observations to see if other elements are present and how common such features are in nebulae.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope released a high‑resolution image of the Helix Nebula, a nearby planetary nebula about 655 light-years away, showing vivid gas pillars around a white dwarf core. The colors map temperature and chemistry, illustrating the dying star's final breath and the raw material that could seed new planets, building on Hubble’s iconic views with sharper detail and new insights into how planetary systems may form from stellar death.
Researchers using the William Herschel Telescope’s WEAVE instrument detected a long, ionized-iron structure—an iron bar—within the Ring Nebula (M57). The bar extends roughly 1,000 Pluto–Sun distances and contains iron mass about that of Mars, located in the nebula’s inner region. Its origin is unknown, with theories ranging from the star’s outer-layer ejection to vaporizing a rocky planet. A follow-up study at higher resolution is planned, and the team published their findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The James Webb Space Telescope captured a detailed image of the Red Spider Nebula, showcasing the complex gas and dust structures from a dying star, offering insights into the future of our own sun as it becomes a red giant billions of years from now.