Unfortunately or not, all must come to an end sooner or later. Nothing lasts forever, and the death of the star is the ultimate proof. Regardless of how big, glorious, and imposing a star is, it still has to face its end one day. Stars die in an even more spectacular and powerful event than their existence itself until that moment. A supernova is the ultimate fate of a star, and it can be as bright as an entire galaxy.
A white dwarf results after the supernova blasts out ultraviolet light that energizes the gas surrounding it. That material gets illuminated, and the next result is a planetary nebula. Hubble gathered some pictures of various nebulas, and we’re happy to present them to you below:
NGC 7027
For the image of this beauty, we must give credit to NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT). The nebula is located 3,000 light-years away from Earth, and it pretty much resembles a rose. There are smudges coming from the central region, and we can bet that there are two stars in that area instead of one. This may be driving faster jets of gas.
NGC 6302
This nebula is located 4,000 light-years away from us, which means a large enough distance to ensure that we’ll never arrive there with our current technology. The blobs present in the outer parts are shaped by the light of the star eating away at the material.
Credit for the image above goes to: NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)
The Hubble Space Telescope was named after the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who, way back in the ’20s, made two revolutionary discoveries for astronomy. He discovered that there are numerous other galaxies in the Universe besides the Milky Way and that they’re moving away from us. Therefore, Hubble also concluded that the Universe is constantly expanding. Until that day, the general perception was that the Universe is static.
