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Three Space Ghosts: Spooky Structures Seen In Newly Released NASA Images
Death Beckons Three Aging Stars: This trio of ghostly images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the disembodied remains of dying stars called planetary nebulas. Planetary nebulas are a late stage in a sun-like star’s life, when its outer layers have sloughed off and are lit up by ultraviolet light from the central star. They come in a variety of shapes, as indicated by these three spooky structures.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
In all of the images, infrared light at wavelengths of 3.6 microns is rendered in blue, 4.5 microns in green, and 8.0 microns in red.
All stars about the mass of our sun will die similarly ethereal deaths. As sun-like stars grow old, billions of years after their inception, they run out of fuel in their cores and puff up into red, giant stars, aptly named “red giants.” The stars eventually cast off their outer layers, which expand away from the star. When ultraviolet light from the core of a dying star energizes the ejected layers, the billowy material glows, bringing their beautiful shapes to light.
These objects in their final death throes, the planetary nebulas, were named erroneously after their resemblance to planets by William Herschel in 1785. They come in an array of shapes, as illustrated by the three highlighted here in infrared images from Spitzer. The ghostly material will linger for only a few thousand years before ultimately fading into the dark night.
Exposed Cranium Nebula
The brain-like orb called PMR 1 has been nicknamed the “Exposed Cranium” nebula by Spitzer scientists. This planetary nebula, located roughly 5,000 light-years away in the Vela constellation, is host to a hot, massive dying star that is rapidly disintegrating, losing its mass.
The Ghost of Jupiter, also known as NGC 3242, is located roughly 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Spitzer’s infrared view shows off the cooler outer halo of the dying star, colored here in red.
This planetary nebula, known as NGC 650, or the Little Dumbbell, is about 2,500 light-years from Earth in the Perseus constellation. Unlike the other spherical nebulas, it has a bipolar or butterfly shape due to a “waist,” or disk, of thick material, running from lower left to upper right.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu andhttp://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .
Contacts and sources:
Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
