at the end of the sun life it will become what

'Not only do we now have a way to measure the presence of stars of ages a few billion years in distant galaxies, which is a range that is remarkably difficult to measure, we even have found out what the Sun will do when it dies!' Bigger stars up to 3 times more massive than the Sun, on the other hand, will produce the brighter nebulae.įor all the other stars in between, the predicted brightness is very close to what has been observed. Now the new models have solved this problem by showing that the Sun is about the lower limit of mass for a star that can produce a visible nebula.Įven a star with a mass less than 1.1 times that of the Sun won't produce visible nebulae. 'The data said you could get bright planetary nebulae from low mass stars like the sun, the models said that was not possible, anything less than about twice the mass of the sun would give a planetary nebula too faint to see.' This has become a source of conflict for the past for 25 years. 'Old, low mass stars should make much fainter planetary nebulae than young, more massive stars. The data showed that this was correct, but the models contradicted it, which has been vexing scientists ever since the discovery was made. This means that, theoretically at least, by looking at the planetary nebulae in other galaxies, astronomers can calculate how far away they are.

They're named planetary nebulae not because they actually have anything to do with planets, but because, when the first ones were discovered by William Herschel in the late 18th century, they were similar in appearance to planets through the telescopes of the time.Īround 25 years ago, astronomers noticed something peculiar: the brightest planetary nebulae in other galaxies all have about the same level of brightness. Planetary nebulae are relatively common throughout the observable Universe, with famous ones including the Helix Nebula, the Cat's Eye Nebula, the Ring Nebula and the Bubble Nebula. The data model that the team created actually predicts the life cycle of different kinds of stars, to figure out the brightness of the planetary nebula associated with different star masses. Some are so bright that they can be seen from extremely large distances measuring tens of millions of light years, where the star itself would have been much too faint to see.' This is what makes the planetary nebula visible. 'It is only then the hot core makes the ejected envelope shine brightly for around 10,000 years - a brief period in astronomy. This reveals the star's core, which by this point in the star's life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying,' explained astrophysicist Albert Zijlstra from the University of Manchester in the UK, one of the authors on the new paper. The envelope can be as much as half the star's mass.

'When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust - known as its envelope - into space.

At the end of the sun life it will become what