Central star in a planetary nebula reveals details of its life

Stars like our sun end their lives as white dwarfs. Some of them are surrounded by a planetary nebula consisting of gas ejected by the dying star shortly before its death. An international research team led by Professor Klaus ...

The chaotic early phase of the solar system

Before the Earth and other planets formed, the young sun was still surrounded by cosmic gas and dust. Over the millennia, rock fragments of various sizes formed from the dust. Many of these became building blocks for the ...

How planetary nebulae get their shapes

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 ...

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