BEAUTY: 
BRAGGING RIGHTS: A beautiful sight
HOW EASY IS IT TO SEE? Best with small telescope
best time to see it: Summer (in Vulpecula)
TYPE: Planetary Nebula
DISCOVERED: 1764 by Charles Messier
Deep in the core of our sun, the forces of gravity and nuclear fusion battle for supremacy. The sun’s immense gravity compresses the core, driving temperatures to millions of degrees. The temperature is high enough to spark nuclear fusion: hydrogen gets converted into helium, releasing massive quantities of energy in the process. The release of energy—essentially a nuclear explosion—pushes out against gravity and keeps the sun from collapsing.
A few billion years from now, long after this book goes out of print, the sun will start to run out of hydrogen. Near the end of its life the sun will expand into a red giant as the pressures and temperatures of the core spike, and the sun’s outer layers get blown into space.
Gravity will continue to compress the core, until temperatures reach over 100 million degrees. The high temperatures will ionize the outer layers of the sun, causing them to glow like neon lights.
For thousands of years, our dead star will be wrapped in a luminous shroud, visible for light-years around. Earth will be long gone by then, either swallowed up by the expanding sun or flung away into space by the violence of the collapse. The beautiful shell of glowing gas, which might look something like the Dumbbell Nebula, will be the solar system’s tombstone.
And if humans have not traveled out to the stars by then, it will be ours too. Perhaps some future alien astronomer will see the glowing nebula through a telescope. If so, I hope they give it a grand name and one befitting its history.
A planetary nebula. This beautiful object was the first planetary nebula discovered—so called because they are small and round, like ghostly planets. Messier 27 is easily visible with binoculars, though somewhat hard to find without a bright star to guide us.
Dumbbell or hourglass? Even at low power you can see it consists of two fuzzy blobs. I think it looks more like an hourglass than a dumbbell. What do you see?
Devil in the detail. At high magnification you might be able to see turbulence in the bright parts. It’s devilishly hard to see, but with steady skies and patience you might get there.
CYGNUS REGION IN SUMMER; 30-DEGREE FIELD OF VIEW
