The colors show the star’s final breath transforming into the raw ingredients for new worlds.
See full article...
See full article...
Webb has given us with a stunning new view of a well-known planetary nebula
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
What an awesome image. I am trying (and failing) to comprehend what it is showing me.
Upvote
127
(128
/
-1)
You can also SEE spirals and discs of star systems forming! Stunning! I presume that's what some of those are.
Upvote
4
(18
/
-14)
"A touch of a blue hue marks the hottest gas in this field, energized by intense ultraviolet light from the white dwarf. Farther out, the gas cools into the yellow regions where hydrogen atoms join into molecules. At the outer edges, the reddish tones trace the coolest material, where gas begins to thin and dust can take shape."
This is what happens when you let a physics major choose the color scale...
Seriously, though - that is one spectacular image! At a guess those granules in the expanding gas are about ten times the size (but only a small fraction of the actual mass) of Jupiter.
ETC: Wow, did I ever get that wrong! Those globules are each about the size of the orbit of Pluto! At least I was right on the mass - they are roughly 1/100th the mass of Jupiter.
This is what happens when you let a physics major choose the color scale...
Seriously, though - that is one spectacular image! At a guess those granules in the expanding gas are about ten times the size (but only a small fraction of the actual mass) of Jupiter.
ETC: Wow, did I ever get that wrong! Those globules are each about the size of the orbit of Pluto! At least I was right on the mass - they are roughly 1/100th the mass of Jupiter.
Last edited:
Upvote
146
(146
/
0)
Upvote
57
(57
/
0)
BTW, probably too late, but any other astronomy nerds in the South West, the annual Death Valley Dark Sky festival is coming up real soon! https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/darkskyfestival.htm
The problem is camping reservations have been booked for months, and probably most of the park hotels are fully booked up too.
The problem is camping reservations have been booked for months, and probably most of the park hotels are fully booked up too.
Upvote
30
(30
/
0)
Basically, this is the outer layer of the star flying through space after being blasted off by the nova.
Upvote
52
(53
/
-1)
Upvote
73
(74
/
-1)
The Hubble image reminded me of a beautiful microscope image of a single cell in a diffuse manner.
Now it feels like Webb metaphorically just zoomed even further all the way down to the chromosomes/dna strands in the cell (metaphorically, of course)!
A massive amount of new detail never seen before.
Now it feels like Webb metaphorically just zoomed even further all the way down to the chromosomes/dna strands in the cell (metaphorically, of course)!
A massive amount of new detail never seen before.
Upvote
69
(69
/
0)
Sorry, no. Those are "just" places where the gas is moving at different speeds. This is the nebula thrown out from a dying star, not the growth of a new one. It is called a planetary nebula because they look a little like planets in old telescopes.
Upvote
86
(86
/
0)
Upvote
17
(17
/
0)
Thank you. I was trying to figure out why it looked like a swarm of small comets(?) heading towards the center but your explanation clears that up. I assume that I am looking at planetary debris as well, or is that really just gas and the false colouring makes it look that way.
(Apologies for my ignorance about beautiful things like this.)
Upvote
24
(24
/
0)
The cloud heads, based on the scale on the NASA site, are of the order of 100 billion kilometers wide
Upvote
35
(36
/
-1)
Thanks for the link, never heard of them before. It also says there are around 40,000 of them in the Helix Nebula. The scale is insane.
Upvote
27
(27
/
0)
I'd love to see a little red box over the Hubble image to show where the Webb is pointed.
Upvote
56
(56
/
0)
This became the latest in a series of JWST images that has graced my desktop background since it went active.
5 mins to get a crop I liked and voila.
5 mins to get a crop I liked and voila.
Upvote
11
(12
/
-1)
Probably not. When the original star moved into the asymptotic giant branch of the H-R, it expanded rapidly and probably "devoured" all of the planets orbiting it. We still don't have a great explanation for the cometary knots/globules/little chunky bits. The current leader is that as the gas expands, it does so in a non-laminar fashion, leading to local instabilities (think of them as three-dimensional eddies) where some material moves slower than the rest.
No need for apologies. Everyone is ignorant of something.
Upvote
55
(55
/
0)
Oh wow. That makes this even more zoomed in than I had though. What an incredible image.
Now let's imagine a future where we have a spare array telescope a few kilometers across!
Upvote
16
(16
/
0)
I believe it’s the bottom right if I correctly followed the star locations.
Absolutely stunning image.
Upvote
15
(15
/
0)
unbelievable!
I'd like to see the Hubble pic annotated with the viewing field of the Webb pic.
I'd like to see the Hubble pic annotated with the viewing field of the Webb pic.
Upvote
13
(14
/
-1)
Dang it !
I almost made it to the end of January without watching star porn at the office !
I almost made it to the end of January without watching star porn at the office !
Upvote
10
(12
/
-2)
Looks like galaxies playing hide-and-seek in a blurry fisheye version of Bryce NP.
Upvote
7
(9
/
-2)
, they make each day more livable.WEBB ability to discern some background galaxy beyond this mess up nebula materials. So Incredible!
Upvote
16
(17
/
-1)
See my earlier comment - very, very roughly 100 billion km wide at the head.
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
A small correction, this star was too small to explode. At that size, the outer layers are blown away in a relatively sedate manner.
Upvote
22
(22
/
0)
I have a question about the Hubble image: Is the formation rooughly spherical, so we are looking at the blue part through a cloud like we see surrounding it? Or is the formation flatish, so there's no red cloud in the way. If the latter, why? For example, is the originating dwarf star rotating about an axis that happens to be pointing in our direction?
Upvote
19
(19
/
0)
This is not a useful comment, but, the JWST would never have been funded by the current US administration and that freaking sucks.
Upvote
35
(42
/
-7)
Blasted off by a red giant. Novas are what happens when a white dwarf is accreting from its binary companion, and have no relationship with planetary nebulas.
EDIT: Sorry, it was already corrected by someone else, and one of your other comments has the correct description, so your use of “nova” was probably just fleeting error.
Last edited:
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
Looking closely at the picture of the Helix nebula, I'm thinking that each one of those millions of little blobs is a planet, or star forming. This picture could portray millions of new planets and stars.
Upvote
-10
(3
/
-13)
Your first intuition is correct. The formation is roughly spherical. The red stuff is dim/diffuse enough that it only shows up well when you’re looking through a greater volume of it, as at the edges.
Upvote
45
(45
/
0)
Upvote
40
(40
/
0)
This is the remains of the outer layers of a roughly Sun-sized star. There is too little mass for what you described, by multiple orders of magnitude.
Upvote
37
(37
/
0)