Thursday, February 17, 2005

astronomy pic of the day

Click on 'astronomy pic of the day' for actual picture (and more!).


Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! The above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo's center. Our Sun will eventually become a "white dwarf butterfly", but not for another 5 billion years.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's go.
Are you in?
Let's go somewhere where there is no gravity.

slim

Expat Nomad said...

Somewhere that there is no gravity. Sorry slim, ain't happenin'... Gravity is everywhere!

But I'd go for a journey to a star like this, that's for sure. If nothing else, than just for the journey.