A strange bubble of glowing gas is putting a cosmic double act back in the spotlight.
A newly released image from the Gemini North telescope in Hawaiʻi is giving astronomers a detailed look at the Crystal Ball Nebula, also known as NGC 1514. According to Sci.News, the object’s textured shell of gas has a lumpy appearance that sets it apart from the smoother, rounder planetary nebulae astronomers usually observe.
NGC 1514 lies about 1,500 light-years away in Taurus, near the border with Perseus. The new image was taken with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the 8.1 metre Gemini North telescope, part of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab.
William Herschel first identified the nebula on Nov. 13, 1790. He coined the term “planetary nebula” after seeing that some of these round objects looked planet-like through early telescopes, even though they are not related to planets.
Planetary nebulae form when a low- or intermediate-mass star nears the end of its life and throws off its outer layers into space. The hot core left behind energises the gas and makes it glow. For the Crystal Ball Nebula, NOIRLab estimates that gas is about 15,000 kelvin.
At the nebula’s centre is a bright source that Herschel thought was a single star. Astronomers now know it is a binary pair. The two stars orbit each other about every nine years, the longest orbital period known for a binary within a planetary nebula.
The image is giving scientists a clearer view of how dying stars shape the material around them. The Crystal Ball Nebula’s unusual, bumpy shells may help researchers better understand how binary stars influence that process.
Planetary nebulae show what can happen when stars like the sun exhaust their fuel and cast off their outer layers. The two stars at the centre of NGC 1514 orbit each other on an approximately nine-year period, the longest known for a binary within a planetary nebula.
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