Hubble image captures the death of a star
The yellow gas in the image is streaming away from the dying stellar core at speeds upwards of 621,371 miles per hour. Photo by Hubble/NASA/ESA
Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope displays the beauty of a stellar death -- in this case, the death of a low-mass star, similar to our sun in size.
Once a red giant, the star is currently in a transitionary phase: It's on its way to becoming a planetary nebula. The Hubble image reveals the star's layers of gas and dust being shed and thrown outward. The expelled material, now forming clouds, could eventually form new stars and planets.
Astronomers rarely catch dying red giants in their transitionary phase. It will only be a few thousand years before the star is a pure planetary nebula -- a blip in space time.
By then, the spent stellar material will have slowed down and taken on more convoluted shapes. As the Hubble shows, the streams of gas are still energy filled and direct. The waves of yellow gas seen in the image are traveling at speeds of 621,371 miles per hour.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/02/03/Hubble-image-captures-the-death-of-a-star/9241486153339/
= new reply since forum marked as read
... considering almost every star that we can see at night with our bare eyes, is a collage of history. (Ignoring our solar system for a sec) As many know the closest easily visible star to Earth is Alpha Centuri (Proxima Centuri is slightly closer, but fainter), and that's about 4.5 light years away. Of course, much of what we see is far more distant. So our night sky is a massive collage of time, ranging from a matter of minutes (in the case of our Sun) to tens of thousands of years. And if you include the Andromeda Galaxy, which is faintly visible to the human eye... what we see with our own eyes is staggering.
I'm always amazed at how "small" fundamentalists' idea of God is. Even though I'm an atheist, I have to say that if God exists, then the magnitude of creation is something that they completely miss!
(Sorry for my mini rant. As I'm sure many know this anyway. But sometimes I like to vent! ... I almost majored in astronomy in university, hence my "soapboxing"
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