A dying star starts shedding its skin

Esahubble_potw1012a_1024

esahubble_potw1012a July 12th, 2010

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA.

This Hubble Space Telescope picture captures a brief but beautiful phase late in the life of a star. The curious cloud around this bright star is called IRAS 19475+3119. It lies in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan) about 15 000 light-years from Earth in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. As stars similar to the Sun age they swell into red giant stars and when this phase ends they start to shed their atmospheres into space. The surroundings become rich in dust and the star is still relatively cool. At this point the cloud shines by reflecting the brilliant light of the central star and the warm dust gives off lots of infrared radiation. It was this infrared radiation that was detected by the IRAS satellite in 1983 and brought the object to the attention of astronomers. Jets from the star may create strange hollow lobes, and in the case of IRAS 19475+3119 two such features appear at different angles. These curious objects are rare and short-lived. As the star continues to shed material the hotter core is gradually revealed. The intense ultraviolet radiation causes the surrounding gas to glow brilliantly and a planetary nebula is born. The objects that come before planetary nebulae, such as IRAS 19475+3119, are known as preplanetary nebulae, or protoplanetary nebulae. They have nothing to do with planets the name planetary nebula arose as they looked rather like the outer planets Uranus and Neptune when seen through small telescopes. This image was created from images taken using the High Resolution Channel of the Hubble Space Telescopes Advanced Camera for Surveys. The red light was captured through a filter letting through yellow and red light (F606W) and the blue was recorded through a standard blue filter (F435W). The green layer of the image was created by combining the blue and red images. The total exposure times were 24 s and 245 s for red and blue respectively. The field of view is about twenty arcseconds across.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1012a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
IRAS 19475+3119
Subject - Milky Way
Nebula > Type > Planetary
Esahubble_potw1012a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 19h 49m 29.5s
DEC = 31° 27’ 18.4”
Orientation
North is 5.5° CW
Field of View
0.4 x 0.4 arcminutes
Constellation
Cygnus

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Blue Hubble (ACS) Optical (B) -
Green Hubble (ACS) Optical (Pseudogreen (B+V)) -
Red Hubble (ACS) Optical (V) -
Esahubble_potw1012a_1280
×
ID
potw1012a
Subject Category
B.4.1.3  
Subject Name
IRAS 19475+3119
Credits
ESA/Hubble and NASA.
Release Date
2010-07-12T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1012a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS, ACS
Color Assignment
Blue, Green, Red
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
B, Pseudogreen (B+V), V
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
297.372752733, 31.4551222994
Reference Dimension
842.0, 842.0
Reference Pixel
421.0, 421.0
Scale
-6.92982200611e-06, 6.92982200611e-06
Rotation
-5.4599999999999982
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1012a
Metadata Date
2010-06-29T16:12:30+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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