A Dying Star with Wind in it's Hair: Abell 31

Not too long ago astronomers came across a Planetary Nebula that looked like it's hair was blowing in the wind. Interesting right? A Planetary Nebula is a cloud of gas formed by a dying star that expels winds of matter outward; first very slow but then speeds up. The photo of Abell 31 was taken with a 0.9 meter telescope in Arizona on Mt. Lemmon. It took a long 21 hour exposer that used various filters. Why are we just noticing this now? Its because the nebula is very faint, which makes it difficult to see, which makes it easy to miss. Usually Planetary Nebulas are very symmetrical, but as you can see, this one is not! Why is that? This is because this Nebula is actually in motion, traveling through space(directly downward toward the bottom of the frame). The red gas is hydrogen, and the blue is oxygen. Although you cant see it, the oxygen is most likely present all around the nebula, but the center is only lit up because it is closer to the White Dwarf. Astronomers have found that it has about half the mass of the Sun, meaning it probably started out life as a star with about twice the mass of our sun, and lost the rest as it aged and blew the winds. This star started dying approximately 130,000 years ago. When this star died and became a White Dwarf, and this White Dwarf core is very small, approximately 4 times the size of earth. Thats pretty small. Although this core is puny, it is HOT, at around 150,000 degrees F. This nebula is the opposite, it is huge, and on a clear night you can see it, its about half the size of a full moon.

I chose to do this article because at first I thought that the picture was really beautiful, and i really dig Nebulas. It was interesting to me how when the star dies it expels gasses in this gorgeous way. I found it very interesting that it is moving in space, and that Nebulas can move in space. Overall this article really stuck out to me because i had never seen or heard of anything like it.