When a star runs out of fuel, it sheds its outer layers of gas and, if it doesn't explode in a supernova, forms a glowing shell of ionized gas that expands into space. Shells like these are known as ...
Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) New Technology Telescope (NTT) and the Hubble Space Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our ...
As we continue to break new ground in the field of cosmology, the importance of carefully categorizing the objects we see comes into focus. Part of this stems from the fact that, increasingly, we find ...
NASA, Donald Walter/South Carolina State University/Paul Scowen/ Brian Moore/Arizona State University A glimpse up at the night sky will reveal a seemingly endless landscape of twinkling stars, but ...
When most amateur astronomers think of dark nebulae, the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) immediately comes to mind. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve surely seen the Great Rift — a region in the ...
The birth of the most massive stars -- those ten to a hundred times the mass of the Sun -- has posed an astrophysical riddle for decades. Massive stars are dense enough to fuse hydrogen while they're ...
A way of estimating more accurate distances to the thousands of so-called planetary nebulae dispersed across our galaxy has been announced. The announcement was made by a team of three astronomers ...
The space between stars is dotted with twisting towers studded with stars, unblinking eyes, ethereal ribbons, and floating bubbles. These fantastical shapes, some of the universe’s most visually ...
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What Is a Nebula?

Hubble Telescope image of the Horsehead Nebula. Credit: T.A.Rector (NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) & Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA ...
Compass needles? Astronomers have discovered something weird in the Milky Way's galactic bulge - a population of planetary nebula are all mysteriously pointing in the same direction. They noticed the ...
As we continue to break new ground in the field of cosmology, the importance of carefully categorizing the objects we see comes into focus. Part of this stems from the fact that, increasingly, we find ...