June 22, 1999
Billions of years of cosmic evolution — the birth and death of stars, the slow coalescence of planets, the patient unfolding of life — all...
PKS285-02: A Young Planetary Nebula
Birthday · June 22, 1999
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APOD published June 22, 1999. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
How do planetary nebulae acquire their exquisite geometrical shapes? To investigate this, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to image several young planetary nebulae. These nebulae are the outer envelopes of stars like our Sun that have recently been cast away to space, leaving behind a core fading to become a white dwarf. In this photograph in red H-alphacarbon that composes humans is thought to be created by red giant stars and ejected into the cosmos in planetary nebulae like PKS285-02. The complexity of this nebula leads some astronomers to hypothesize that these shells were created by high-speed, collimated outflows during a late phase of this star's evolution.