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Stellar Water Fountain

Posted by michael on from the drink-up dept.

ktulu1115 writes "Space.com writes: An aging star that spits water into space could provide astronomers the clues they need to explain the formation of planetary nebulae, the cloudy remnants of a star's death."

1 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great Journalism by CanSpice · · Score: 3, Informative

    I hope you're trying to be funny.*

    Any H2O molecule is a water molecule, regardless of its state. When I was doing analysis of data looking at a young stellar object, there were definite water absorbtion bands in the spectrum. The temperature of this object was something like 80K, which is well below the freezing point of water, and yet, when it came time to write up the paper, I referred to it as water.

    Everybody in the astronomical world does the same. They might call it "water ice"**, but it's always water.

    * If you're not, then I weep for the educational system. If you are, then I weep for whoever modded your comment up as "insightful".

    ** And "ice" doesn't necessarily refer to water ice either. Another example of ice found out there would be methane ice.