Last Outbursts of a Dying Star
U Cam in the constellation of Camelopardalis, is a star nearing the end of its life. As stars run out of stellar fuel (usually after billions of year), begin to lose a gravitational grip and they become unstable. Every few thousand years, U Cam blown a nearly spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core begins to fuse. Image Credit: ESA/NASA
The realm of a Dying Star
At the ends of their lives, the stars like our sun run out of nuclear fuel in a phase that is called the preplanetary or protoplanetary nebula stage. In this Hubble image of the Egg Nebula you can see one of the best views to date of this brief, but dramatic, phase in a star’s life. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA
Eight-Burst Nebula
NGC 3132 is a striking example of a planetary nebula. This expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star, is known to amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere as the ‘Eight-Burst’ or the ‘Southern Ring’ Nebula. Neither the unusual shape of the surrounding cooler shell nor the structure and placements of the cool filamentary dust lanes running across NGC 3132 are well understood. Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA/ESA)
