nebular morphologies tagged posts

How Planetary Nebulae get their Shapes

Four planetary nebulae as seen by Hubble, showing four of many nebular morphologies. Astrononers used high spatial resolution millimeter-wavelength images of molecules in the winds of fourteen planetary nebulae to conclude that the widely varing shapes of planetary nebulae are primarily the result of the evolution of central stars with orbiting binary companions.
NASA/HST

About 7.5 billion years from now, our sun will have converted most of its hydrogen fuel into helium through fusion, and then burned most of that helium into carbon and oxygen. It will have swollen to a size large enough to fill the solar system nearly to the current orbit of Mars, and lost almost half of its mass in winds...

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