Hubble witnesses death throes of rare carbon star

Andrew Purcell, online producer

(Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA and H. Olofsson (Onsala Space Observatory))

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured some pretty impressive images in the 22 years since it was delivered into low-Earth orbit by the space shuttle Discovery, but this one is right up there.

Released by NASA earlier this week, the image shows an ageing carbon star in its final death throes, ejecting a gigantic spherical bubble of gas, many hundreds of times its own diameter. Amazingly, the star itself actually fits into one tiny pixel at the centre of the image. The white glow surrounding it is a result of the super bright light the star is emitting, which has overwhelmed the camera's receptors.

The star is located 1,500 light years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis (the giraffe). It is a rare type that is known as a carbon star because its atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen. These two elements combine in the star's upper atmosphere to form carbon monoxide until all the oxygen is consumed. Then the leftover carbon atoms form other carbon compounds. Low surface gravity means as much as half of the total mass of a carbon star may be lost to powerful stellar winds.

This carbon star is now in the red giant phase of its evolution and could have only centuries of life left - a mere blink of an eye in stellar time-scales. This red giant is thought to cough out a nearly spherical shell of gas every few thousand years. The gas from the latest eruption is the faint bubble seen surrounding the star.

In about 5 billion years, our own sun will become a red giant too, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and Earth. An expected increase in activity as the sun ages means that Earth will become uninhabitable long before then, though.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/21353041/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A70Chubble0Ewitnesses0Edeath0Ethroes0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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