A Dying Star in a Different Light
Credit: Caltech/Palomar
Observation • November 17th, 2010
This visible-light image is from the Digitized Sky Survey, based at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. The object, NGC 1514 is actually a pair of stars -- one star is a dying giant somewhat heavier and hotter than our sun, and the other was an even larger star that has now contracted into a dense body called a white dwarf. As the giant star ages, it sheds some its outer layers of material to form a large bubble around the two stars. Jets of material from the white dwarf are thought to have smashed into this bubble wall.
