The sands of time are running out for the central star of this the Hourglass Nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected and its core becomes a cooling, fading white dwarf. In 1995, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to make a series of images of planetary nebulae, including the one above. Here, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red, hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the 'hourglass.' The unprecedented sharpness of Hubble's images revealed surprising details of the nebula ejection process and may resolve the outstanding mystery of the variety of complex shapes and symmetries of planetary nebulae. Image Credit: NASA, WFPC2, HST, R. Sahai and J. Trauger (JPL) Read More
Recent Comments
BelfSleby: Wow - very awesome subject. I am goin to write about it too!!
sandrar: Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.
Klystron: No, I didn’t. Perhaps you’re right and more details are given elsewhere. I just would have appreciated just a little more explanation also in that article. Probably because I’m always slightly more interested in methods than in results… :o)
Massimo: About the methods… have you tried to track other publications by the same authors? probably they gave away some technicalities in other and more specialistic journals. Applying the model to only two scenarios doesn’t mean much, although it can be an interesting exercise. It would be interesting to know what results they got for Palestine, Rwanda, Sudan, etc etc…...