The colourful demise of a star
A new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope has shown the colourful demise of a star - a fate that awaits our own sun.
A new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope has shown the colourful demise of a star - a fate that awaits our own sun.
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| NGC 2440 casts of outer layers of gas as its life comes to an end – a fate that awaits our own sun. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI) |
The white dwarf at the centre of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of more than 200,000?C. The nebula’s chaotic structure suggests that the star shed its mass episodically so that during each outburst, the star expelled material in a different direction. This can be seen in the two bowtie-shaped lobes. The nebula also is rich in clouds of dust, some of which form long, dark streaks pointing away from the star. NGC 2440 lies about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Puppis.
The material expelled by the star glows with different colours depending on its composition, its density and how close it is to the hot central star. Blue samples helium; blue-green oxygen, and red nitrogen and hydrogen.
