The dying star has given birth to a planetary nebula

Aug 1, 2015 08:58 GMT  ·  By

The Hubble Space Telescope launched back in 1990. In a few years, it will retire and be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope, now in the making. Meanwhile, rather than idling, Hubble is still probing the universe around us.

Recently, it took the time to study and image a dying star in the constellation of Sagittarius.

This star, estimated to sit at a distance of about 15,000 light-years from our planet, has ejected its outer layers and given birth to a planetary nebula, i.e. NGC 6565, essentially a glowing shell of gas sprinkled with the occasional cosmic dust.

“The star’s agony has culminated in a wonderful planetary nebula known as NGC 6565, a cloud of gas that was ejected from the star after strong stellar winds pushed the star’s outer layers away into space,” NASA astronomers explain.

The nebula will eventually vanish

All that is left of the star that created the NGC 6565 planetary nebula is its luminous core. Ultraviolet radiation produced by the star's carcass has colored the cloud of gas around it, making it look like a dysmorphic cosmic eye.

Have a look at Hubble's portrait of the planetary nebula in the gallery below to see for yourselves.

Scientists expect that, in about 10,000 years, the dying star will cool down and become a white dwarf, which they describe as a dense sphere of degenerate matter about the size of Earth, but with a mass comparable to that of the Sun.

When this happens, there will be no more ultraviolet radiation to excite the gas in NGC 6565 and so the planetary nebula will begin to fade and eventually vanish from sight.

A view of another planetary nebula shaped like a butterfly was released by astronomers at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory earlier this month.

This other nebula, named NGC 2346 and located some 2,300 light-years from us, was imaged not by Hubble but by the Gemini Observatory telescope in Chile.

Planetary nebulae are created by dying stars (3 Images)

The Hubble Space Telescope
Planetary nebula NGC 6565Planetary nebula 2346
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