Category Astronomy/Space

Planetary nebula HuBi 1 (left) and another planetary nebula Abell39 (right, 6800 light years away from our solar system). Abell39 is an archetypal, textbook case of a spherical nebula surrounding a bright central star (a white dwarf), its nebula composes of hydrogen-rich ionized gas. HuBi 1, its central star has undergone a “born-again” event ejecting metal-rich material into the old, hydrogen-rich nebula, has a double-shell structure – a hydrogen-rich outer shell and a nitrogen-rich inner shell.
Credit: (HuBi 1 image adopted from Guerrero, Fang, Miller Bertolami, et al., 2018, Nature Astronomy, tmp, 112. Image credit for Abell39: The 3.5m WIYN Telescope, National Optical Astronomical Observatory, NSF. URL: https://www.noao.edu)

Oldest rock on Earth: Acasta River gneiss (stock image). Credit: © Xenomanes / Fotolia

Artist’s view of a sunset over KELT-9b. The nearby warm blue star covers 35° in the planet’s sky, about 70 times the apparent size of the sun in the Earth’s sky. Under this scorching sun, the planet’s atmosphere is warm enough to shine in reddish-orange tones and vaporize heavy metals such as iron and titanium. Credit: Denis Bajram Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-iron-titanium-atmosphere-exoplanet.html#jCp

Computer simulation of a region of the universe wherein a low-density “void” (dark blue region at top center) is surrounded by denser structures containing numerous galaxies (orange/white). The research done by Becker and his team suggests that early in cosmic history, these void regions would have been the murkiest places in the universe even though they contained the least amount of dark matter and gas.
Credit: TNG Collaboration.