Related topics: stars · white dwarfs · hubble space telescope

Bizarre alignment of planetary nebulae

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's New Technology Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy. They have found that butterfly-shaped members of ...

Free-floating planets may be born free

Tiny, round, cold clouds in space have all the right characteristics to form planets with no parent star. New observations, made with Chalmers University of Technology telescopes, show that not all free-floating planets were ...

NGC 2392: A beautiful end to a star's life

(Phys.org) —Stars like the Sun can become remarkably photogenic at the end of their life. A good example is NGC 2392, which is located about 4,200 light years from Earth. NGC 2392, (nicknamed the "Eskimo Nebula") is what ...

A ghostly green bubble: VLT snaps a planetary nebula

(Phys.org) —This intriguing new picture from ESO's Very Large Telescope shows the glowing green planetary nebula IC 1295 surrounding a dim and dying star located about 3300 light-years away in the constellation of Scutum ...

Hubble sees J 900 masquerading as a double star

(Phys.org) —The object in this image is Jonckheere 900 or J 900, a planetary nebula—glowing shells of ionized gas pushed out by a dying star. Discovered in the early 1900s by astronomer Robert Jonckheere, the dusty nebula ...

Soccer balls in interstellar space

An international team of astronomers led by Masaaki Otsuka (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics or ASIAA) has detected the C60 fullerene (molecules of carbon with 60 atoms arranged in patterns resembling ...

Hubble observes glowing, fiery shells of gas

(Phys.org) —It may look like something from "The Lord of the Rings," but this fiery swirl is actually a planetary nebula known as ESO 456-67. Set against a backdrop of bright stars, the rust-colored object lies in the constellation ...

A cosmic holiday ornament, Hubble-style

(Phys.org)—'Tis the season for holiday decorating and tree-trimming. Not to be left out, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. The intricate ...

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