Stellar Evolution

When the Sun Dies, it Could Produce a Fantastic Ring in Space, Like This New Image From JWST

We recently got a new image of the famous Ring Nebula from JWST using its NIRCam instrument. This week we…

1 month ago

Is This How You Get Magnetars?

Imagine a living star with a magnetic field at least 100,000 times stronger than Earth's field. That's the strange stellar…

1 month ago

A New Simulation Reveals One Entire Stage of a Star's Life

Stars begin as giant clouds of gas and dust that pull together through mutual gravity into a dense protostar. At…

1 month ago

Yes! A JWST Image of the Ring Nebula

Brace yourselves for great JWST views of the iconic Ring Nebula (M57). An international team of astronomers just released a…

2 months ago

Astronomers are Watching a Planet Get its Atmosphere Blasted Away into Space

What do you get when a hot young world orbits a wildly unstable young red dwarf? For AU Microsopii b,…

2 months ago

Astronomers Have a New Trick to Work out the Age of Stars

Determining the age of a star is surprisingly tricky and has wide error bars. It's only inside star clusters that…

2 months ago

Record-Breaking Magnetar was There in the Data All Along

The cosmic zoo has strange beasts that astronomers stumble across in the most fascinating ways. Not long ago a team…

2 months ago

A Dying Red Giant Star has Thrown Out Giant Symmetrical Loops of Gas and Dust

The Gemini South telescope has captured a new image of the glowing nebula IC 2220. Nicknamed the Toby Jug Nebula,…

2 months ago

Supervillains Take Note. Here’s a New Way to Destroy a Star

If you're an evil genius supervillain looking to freak out your enemy with a big messy space kablooie, here's a…

3 months ago

Astronomers Find a White Dwarf Pulsar

When astronomers talk about the "end states" of stellar evolution, several categories come to mind: black holes, neutron stars/pulsars, and…

3 months ago