Stars like the sun end their lives as highly compact white dwarfs, but as they shrink down into this phase they release clouds of gas which form a so-called "planetary nebula". This is a rather ...

"We always knew planetary nebulae were pretty. What we see now is spectacular," Albert Zijlstra, an astrophysics professor at the University of Manchester, said in a statement about the new image.

Once the planets were born, what happened to the rest of the nebula? In 2017, planetary scientist Huapei ... constraints on the actual dissipation timeline. In particular, the team wants to ...

A planetary nebula like this one forms when a dying star releases an outer layer of gas, which creates a the colorful, shell-like structure that sets planetary nebulae apart. The telescope allowed ...

But for fatalists the world over, gazing into this planetary nebula some 2,500 light-years away may not have inspired celebratory feelings — rather, a foreboding of what's to come. Perhaps Joel ...

"When a single star evolves into a planetary nebula, there is no process that we know of that has that kind of time period," Wesson said. "Instead, these rings suggest that there must be a ...

The Butterfly Nebula is changing, and astronomers are puzzled as to why these changes are occurring. Observations of this planetary nebula show dramatic changes in the butterfly’s ‘wings’ in ...

While most planetary nebulae are small and beautiful, there is no doubt that the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) is something special. Found by Charles Messier in July 1764, M27 was the first planetary ...