How the Sun will die: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher

Darkish, energetic sunspot areas and vibrant prominences protruding from the Solar’s edges are seen on this Hydrogen-alpha shot of our star. Credit score: Rob Lyons

All good issues should come to an finish. That’s true even for our Solar — as fixed a presence as it could appear. Whereas it has burned brightly in our planet’s daytime sky for 4.6 billion years, it’s going to finally run out of hydrogen in 5 billion years or so and swell right into a crimson big. Ultimately, maybe 7 billion years from now, it’s going to expel its outer layers of gasoline into space and switch into a unique sort of object: a white dwarf, surrounded by a planetary nebula. (Regardless of the title, planetary nebulae don’t have anything to do with planets — the title comes from an period when crude optics made them seem planetlike.)

Planetary nebulae are a number of the hottest observational targets within the sky — just like the Ring Nebula (M57), the Owl Nebula (M97), or the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), to call just a few. They’ll tackle a wide range of appearances relying on the angle at which we view them. When seen on-axis, they could seem roughly symmetric, just like the Ring Nebula. However when seen edge on, they will look far more prolonged. In some instances, just like the Dumbbell Nebula, the central white dwarf is wobbling like a prime because it spins, which creates much more advanced construction.

The Dumbbell Nebula (M27) is a planetary nebula roughly 1,270 light-years distant in Vulepecula. This picture captures the knotty outflows inside the acquainted dumbbell form, and the way the article’s total construction is shaped by the precession of the central white dwarf’s rotation. Credit score: Patrick Cosgrove

What is going to our Solar’s planetary nebula seem like? Sadly, we’ll have to attend 7 billion years (and transfer to a distant star system) to seek out out.

Observe Astronomy journal, the world’s best-selling astronomy journal:

🌎 Web site: https://astronomy.com
📖 Subscribe: http://subscribe.astronomy.com
📘 Fb: https://www.facebook.com/AstronomyMagazine
📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/astronomy.magazine
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/AstronomyMag

Store Celestron telescopes:
🔭 Web site: https://celestron.com

Observe Dave Eicher:
📘 Fb: https://www.facebook.com/davidjohneicher
📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/eicher.david
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/deicherstar