February 14, 2007—Despite losing one of its most popular cameras last month, the Hubble Space Telescope is still proving its worth, capturing a new round of awe-inspiring images with its remaining camera.
On Tuesday NASA released this new shot of a dying star—a white dwarf shown as a bright dot near the center of nebula NGC 2440—that was once similar to our sun.
Low- to medium-size stars like our sun usually end their lives as white dwarfs. Once most of a star's hydrogen has been converted to helium, the star enters the red giant phase, eventually expelling its outer material to form a nebula of stellar debris. The hot core left behind is a white dwarf.
Spied by the telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, this white dwarf is 4,000 light-years from Earth. It is also one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of nearly 400,000°F (200,000°C). Ultraviolet light from the dying star is illuminating gaseous material being cast off from the star's core.
Our sun will also likely burn out and become a white dwarf surrounded by a vivid nebula—but not for another five billion years.
But if you're all about the destination, then take a fucking flight.
We're going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights.
And we're definitely going to hell, but we'll have all the best stories to tell.
Yes, it lost the main camera several weeks ago. They had to scrap lots of projects because they relied heavily on that camera. Now they're thinking about trying to have it repaired with the 2008 mission, but apparently, it's not very likely that such an attempt might be successful.
Yeah, it''s like they can't decide whther to keep it limping along or just trash it. I've heard them say they were going to do both, depending who was speaking when.
Glad you liked the pic. Thought it was interesting to see what the sun and solar-system would look like in a few billion years...
Well I never! That happens to be my desktop background at home...