NOIRLab Releases Gemini North Image of 1,500-Light-Year Binary Star NGC 1514
Updated
Updated · abcnews.com · May 21
NOIRLab Releases Gemini North Image of 1,500-Light-Year Binary Star NGC 1514
12 articles · Updated · abcnews.com · May 21
Gemini North’s newly released view shows NGC 1514 — a dying binary star system 1,500 light-years away — as a milky, spherical cloud nicknamed the Crystal Ball Nebula.
The image was completed in color last week from observations made last year atop Mauna Kea, where the Hawaii telescope captured the system in its final gas-shedding phase.
Scientists say one of the two orbiting stars, once larger than the sun, likely cast off its outer layers; the exposed core then heated the gas to tens of thousands of degrees, making it glow.
The release offers a fresh look at a planetary nebula, the brief stage when a dying star expels material that forms an illuminated shell in space.
How will the Crystal Ball Nebula's two stars shape its final, explosive fate?
With old telescopes being demolished, what does this new image signal about the future of ground-based astronomy?
As new cosmic secrets are unveiled on Maunakea, how is ancient Hawaiian wisdom guiding the future of astronomy?