Not a Comet (APOD 26 Jun 2008)

[emc]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080626.html

Although not a comet, the image tells on itself...

How about calling it a super sized galactic star puff???

Or simply astro puff???

"Planetary Nebula" seems a little off-base to me... I expect orbiting planets would have become more of a "puff coating".

I wonder what kind of sound the creation (or de-creation) event made?

When my car runs out of core fuel, it dies a quiet death... if you discount the blaring horns.

[orin stepanek]

Hi Ed! Do you wonder if there was sound if there were no ears to hear it? Puff, Puff, Cocoa puffs. It does look kind of like a puff. I found out I have something in common with Messier. He was born over 200 years before me but I was born on the same day. For what Charles Messier had to work with; he was quite an achiever in cataloging astronomic objects.
Orin

[emc]

Hi Ed! Do you wonder if there was sound if there were no ears to hear it? Orin

Hi Orin,
If you believe there is a God and you believe what the Bible teaches… then not only did the event make a sound but it was also heard.

For what Charles Messier had to work with; he was quite an achiever in cataloging astronomic objects.
Orin

Yes, it is amazing what Mr. Messier was able to accomplish… it is very humbling what I learn about our ancestors when they did not have the tools that we can tend to take for granted today.

BTW - Happy Birthday Orin! It was cool how you slipped that in... 8)

[bystander]

"Planetary Nebula" seems a little off-base to me... I expect orbiting planets would have become more of a "puff coating".

Planetary Nebula is kind of a misnomer and has nothing to do with planets. Planetary Nebula are immense balls of gas and plasma expelled from a central star which then collapsed. Intense radiation from the central star ionizes and lights up the nebula from within. William Herschel coined the term Planetary Nebula because he thought they resembled the gas giants of our own solar system.

See APOD Search Results: Planetary Nebula

BTW - Happy Birthday, Orin!

[emc]

Planetary Nebula is kind of a misnomer and has nothing to do with planets.

Hi bystander,
Just to be clear... I was musing about how the exploding "sun-like" star would have engulfed any orbiting planets, possibly rearranging their molecules in the process... but thanks for the lesson , I didn't know how the term 'Planetary Nebula' came to be.

[orin stepanek]

bystander and emc; thanks for the best wishes! Can you imagine what astronomy was like in those days of yore when looking through those old telescopes? Probably like looking through an inexpensive telescope today. I wonder if they even had mechanics for tracking an object to compensate for the Earths rotation? also http://schmidling.com/planebs.htm pretty much the same as bystanders link.
Orin

[Arramon]

If you believe there is a God and you believe what the Bible teaches… then not only did the event make a sound but it was also heard.

What in the world?

[emc]

If you believe there is a God and you believe what the Bible teaches… then not only did the event make a sound but it was also heard.

What in the world?

Don't want to get too far off the APOD subject... but since you asked... According to the Bible, God is omnipresent and omniscient. Which although not completely humanly comprehensible, means God is everywhere and knows everything and has no beginning and no end… which is of course infinitely beyond human… again, as I said, according to ancient Scripture.

So if any star explodes, God would hear it. Maybe He would call it a cocoa puff.

[Qev]

Is it just me, or does it look like the stellar remnant is tracing out an hourglass shape in the nebula with a pair of polar jets, sweeping about as the star's poles precess?

[henk21cm]

Planetary Nebula is kind of a misnomer and has nothing to do with planets.

Telescope in these past days were not half as good as moderate amateur telescopes nowadays. Most of all, in modern day telescopes a lot of effort is spent on the stability of the mounting and its foundation. Christiaan Huygens used a telescope of which the primary lense was mounted on a flag pole. The eye piece was held with a long thin wire connected to the primary lens. No tube, just air. The quality of the optics was poor. Remember that some renaisance astronomers completely missed the rings of Saturn. In the eyes of Huygens Saturn resembled an oval star rather than a planet with a surrounding ring.

Next story i read in a book by Joachim Hermann. The same story can be found on a website . Texts with [] are added from the book. Just another example of bad optics (and a stubborn man).

<<Quote: Back in 1722, [december 2nd to be precise] a German [theologian and] mathematics professor, J.G. Liebknecht, was examining Mizar with a crude telescope [2 m long] and chanced upon a faint star between Mizar and Alcor. [Since he thought that the star was moving,] He believed that he had discovered a new planet and named it "Sidus Ludoviciana" or "Ludwig's Star" after his sovereign, the Landgrave Ludwig of Hessen-Darmstadt. His hopes were to flatter his local sovereign in hopes of being granted money.

But the reaction from other astronomers was universally unfavorable, as they noted that the "planet" was merely a telescopic star. The object never moved again, and Liebknecht disappeared in a hail of ridicule. Nonetheless, to this day, the star still retains the name that was bestowed upon it by Liebknecht when - for a few months anyway - it was thought to be a planet. :etouQ >>

A professor in philosophy, L.P. Thümmig from Halle wrote a very sarcastic article, that it "was not necessary to write letters to every astronomer in Europe, when one sees a star for the first time". In stead of keeping a low profile, Liebknecht responded with a 16 page article, without a trace of changing the position of Ludwigs star.

This illustrates the poor quality of old telescopes, either optics and/or mounting. Nevertheless the work done with these telescopes is remarkable, such as Messier and Lord Ross.

Now food for thought.
Todays nebula looks like a gas giant. However the ring nebula in Lyra hardly resembles a planet. If the same puff of gas is responsible for its origin, why do we see todays nebula as a disk, while the ring nebula is definitively ring shaped?

[emc]

Now food for thought.
Todays nebula looks like a gas giant. However the ring nebula in Lyra hardly resembles a planet. If the same puff of gas is responsible for its origin, why do we see todays nebula as a disk, while the ring nebula is definitively ring shaped?

Maybe Qev's observation is a clue.

Is it just me, or does it look like the stellar remnant is tracing out an hourglass shape in the nebula with a pair of polar jets, sweeping about as the star's poles precess?

Combined with henk21cm's reference to the ring nebula... and at risk of REALLY showing my ignorance... perhaps there is a similar evolution that exploded stars undergo based on size, age, composition, proximity to other objects, speed of rotation at explosion time zero... that they eventually reshape into rings or some such???

[Sputnick]

It appears to be a brain bursting with wonderful ideas .. maybe my brain, when it's not so tired as it is now.

[Sputnick]

Hi Ed! Do you wonder if there was sound if there were no ears to hear it? Puff, Puff, Cocoa puffs. It does look kind of like a puff. I found out I have something in common with Messier. He was born over 200 years before me but I was born on the same day. For what Charles Messier had to work with; he was quite an achiever in cataloging astronomic objects.
Orin

Are you talking about the Hockey Player? I didn't know he had an interest in astronomy.

[bystander]

Are you talking about the Hockey Player? I didn't know he had an interest in astronomy.

Didn't know there was hockey player named Charles Messier. We're talking about this one.

APOD: June 26, 1996 - Happy Birthday Charles Messier: M1
APOD: 2000 March 11 - Messier Marathon

Charles Messier (June 26, 1730 – April 12, 1817)
List of Messier Objects

[orin stepanek]

Are you talking about the Hockey Player? I didn't know he had an interest in astronomy.

Didn't know there was hockey player named Charles Messier. We're talking about this one.

APOD: June 26, 1996 - Happy Birthday Charles Messier: M1
APOD: 2000 March 11 - Messier Marathon

Charles Messier (June 26, 1730 – April 12, 1817)
List of Messier Objects

I didn't know there was a hockey player named Messier either; but I found out his name is Mark, and not Charles
http://www.geocities.com/colosseum/field/9468/
Orin

[Nancy D]

If there's so much hydrogen and oxygen in this "puff" or whatever it is, does that mean it may someday make a planet or planets with water???

[neufer]

Ceci n'est pas une pipe aussi.

[emc]

If there's so much hydrogen and oxygen in this "puff" or whatever it is, does that mean it may someday make a planet or planets with water???

There is a well written article on "Planetary Nebula" in wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebula

According to the article, PN's provide material back into the galactic medium... I am not the person to properly answer your question but it seems at least plausible that the PN remnants could wind up as part of a new planet.

I mostly love the images... the science is icing on the cake when I am able to grasp it.

There are some very beautiful and intriguing PN images out there...
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070803.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080322.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031207.html

[emc]

Ceci n'est pas une pipe aussi.

This is not a painting...

Ceci n'est pas une couch gag

[henk21cm]

According to the article, PN's provide material back into the galactic medium... I am not the person to properly answer your question but it seems at least plausible that the PN remnants could wind up as part of a new planet.

A planetary nebula itself will not end as a new proto planet. What you see is an expanding bubble of gas, with a large, outwardly directed, radial (longitudinal) velocity. The tangential velocity (transversal) is some orders of magnitude smaller than the longitudinal velocity. Vortices will increase local mixing, but the formation of larger structures is -to paraphrase Art Neufer: "with a lot of waving"- not likely.

The shock front may trigger densification of dust and gas far away from the star and so ignite the process of star formation. The common belief is that super novae trigger these events. In a more dense dusty area the puff of a -planetary nebula generating- star might do the trick.


____________

Regards,
Henk

[apodman]

Is ... the stellar remnant ... tracing out an hourglass shape in the nebula with a pair of polar jets ... ?

I'll buy that until I hear another theory; the shape is there.

But in the upper half of the hourglass is the clear figure of a human from the waist up, right arm (photo left) at side, left arm (photo right) at side or with hand raised from lowered elbow, face looking up at an angle, hair combed back, a little glow on the forehead, perhaps an earring, you can see it.

Back in reality, I have always thought the overall shape of the Dumbbell Nebula through a telescope (without the glorious color and dim-end visibility benefit of photographic exposure) was more like a bowtie.

Of course, the name "Bow-Tie" is already taken, nebula-wise, by NGC 40.

Then there's NGC 2440 which also resembles a bowtie, although tied differently. See APOD http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070215.html and/or read commentary in this forum at http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... hp?p=92393 to see disagreement over the name of NGC 2440. NGC 2440 is not so bowtie-like in APOD http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060507.html so judge for yourself. I don't have a photo link for NGC 40.

[Sputnick]

Hi Ed! Do you wonder if there was sound if there were no ears to hear it? Puff, Puff, Cocoa puffs. It does look kind of like a puff. I found out I have something in common with Messier. He was born over 200 years before me but I was born on the same day. For what Charles Messier had to work with; he was quite an achiever in cataloging astronomic objects.
Orin

Are you talking about the Hockey Player? I didn't know he had an interest in astronomy.

Mark, Charlie, what's the difference? The names are written in the stars.

[astrolabe]

Hello Sputnick,

MARK and CHARLES may be different from each other (even if only in time) but that can only be an assumption on my part. Ultimately though, determining the differences in anything is the privileged realm of the observer.

Mr. Messier did leave quite a legacy though to be sure. The compliment is multiple choice