The Blue Snowball Planetary Nebula
Explanation:
Will the Sun one day look like - a blue snowball?
Maybe! The Blue Snowball is a
planetary nebula
- and in 5 billion years the
Sun
will throw off its outer layers and go through a planetary
nebula
phase. A star can appear "normal" only so long as there
are sufficient nuclear reactions in its core. Soon thereafter,
gravity will win out and compress the stellar core to higher temperatures.
Eventually the core becomes a
white dwarf.
These high temperatures somehow cause the expulsion of star's
outer layers, creating a
planetary
nebula
such as the
Blue Snowball
pictured above. Although the Blue Snowball, also known as NGC
7662, does appear blue, the
above picture's colors
are not real and were chosen to highlight the emission of certain
ions in the nebula. Many things are still not known about
planetary nebula,
including details of the physical mechanism that creates the nebula,
and the reason for fast knots of gas in the outer regions known
as
fliers.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
