Place of a dying star
The planetary nebula NGC 1514 in the constellation Taurus is also known as the Crystal Ball Nebula, as it can appear like one in small telescopes. The nebula marks the location of a dying star.
About 1500 light years away from us in the constellation of Taurus is the planetary nebula NGC 1514, also known as the crystal ball nebula as it appears in smaller telescopes. In fact, this cosmic crystal ball allows us to look into the future of our sun in more than five billion years when it transforms from a red giant into a white dwarf.
The progenitor star of NGC 1514 had bloated into a red giant after exhausting its hydrogen supply in the centre, emitting an enormously strong stellar wind. As a result, the star lost a significant part of its mass. After the final extinction of the subsequent fusion reactions, the former core of the red giant contracted into a very hot structure about the size of the Earth, but with up to one and a half times the mass of our Sun: a white dwarf was born. It is so hot that it excites the previously ejected gases, which accumulated in a shell around it, to glow in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet. The gas envelope is about 15,000 degrees Celsius hot, but comparatively thin.
Source: © International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA / Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) / NGC 1514: The Crystal Ball Nebula / CC BY 4.0
The white dwarf inside NGC 1514 can be recognised directly. However, it is not alone, as spectral analyses have shown, but part of a double star system. The white dwarf and its partner orbit their common centre of gravity once every nine years, the longest known period for a binary star in a planetary nebula. The companion ensured that the stellar wind of the red giant was distributed irregularly, so that NGC 1514 formed several lumpy-looking shells. NGC 1514 has a visual extent of around one light year and was discovered by the German-British astronomer Wilhelm Herschel back in 1790.
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