When a star comes to the end of its life and dies, it can be an epic and destructive event, throwing out an explosion of heat and light — but it can create stunning new forms as well. A gorgeous new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows what can be created by the death of a star, featuring a striking object called a planetary nebula.
The name planetary nebula is confusing, as these objects don’t actually have anything to do with planets. They were given that name by early astronomers, who saw round objects through their telescopes and assumed they were distant planets. In fact, they are clouds of dust and gas created by dying stars.
This particular planetary nebula is called Kohoutek 4-55, and is located within the Milky Way around 4,600 light-years away. The different colors of the image represent different elements thrown off by a star as it died.
“Planetary nebulae are the spectacular final display at the end of a giant star’s life,” NASA explains. “Once a red giant star has exhausted its available fuel and shed its last layers of gas, its compact core will contract further, enabling a final burst of nuclear fusion. The exposed core reaches extremely hot temperatures, radiating ultraviolet light that energizes the enormous clouds of gas cast off by the star. The ultraviolet light ionizes atoms in the gas, making the clouds glow brightly. In this image, red and orange indicate nitrogen, green is hydrogen, and blue shows oxygen.”
The particular structure of Kohoutek 4-55 is unusual, as it features several different layers which show up as rings of different colors. This phase will only last a short time, compared to the life of a star, as within a few ten of thousands of years the glowing clouds of gases will have dissipated to leave just the core of a the dead star behind, in the form of a white dwarf.
This image marks a bittersweet moment for Hubble too, as it is the last image that will use data from one of Hubble’s instruments, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. This instrument was replaced by the newer Wide Field Camera 3 in 2009, but scientists have been making use of the data from the older instrument for the last 16 years — including some of the last data it took before replacement, which has been processed using today’s newest techniques to produce this stunning image.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.