Kepler to Investigate Newly Discovered Nebula

derGoldstein writes with an article in DigitalTrends: "An amateur astronomer recently discovered what has been confirmed to be one of the best looks yet at a planetary nebula, the last, gassy breath of a dying star. The nebula, named Kronenberger 61 after the enthusiast who discovered it, will offer insights into the future and death of our own sun."

Comments

"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[molo]

Amy Winehouse, is that you?

-molo

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[kthejoker]

Comedy 101: If you're going for offensive, you have to be funny.

Seriously, that was Limbaugh-esque in its complete laziness.

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[camperdave]

Who is Amy Winehouse?

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[Gohtar]

You are not alone

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Google?

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[Anonymous Coward]

It was funny. Because it was probably true. ^^
The problem is not him. It's you.

I have no idea, why people like you give any respect to the equivalent of a popular crack whore.

<rant>But of course, people like you are unable to imagine, why anyone would not think exactly like them, since they are obviously the center of the universe... And to them, there is no reality outside of theirs.
So if they, in their rigid minds, don't think it's funny, so clearly it can't ever be funny for anyone else in the entire universe. Impossible! Unthinkable! ...I wonder if you're a Wikipedia admin. They are the pinnacle of egomania.</rant>

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[old_kennyp]

Took me 2 days before I found out who AW was when the news broke Every computer user would know what Google is, but not everyone knows every musician!

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[Anonymous Coward]

Every computer user would know what Google is, but not everyone knows every musician!

Often times a computer user just needs a little encouragement to realize that Google will tell them who any musician is.

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[wallsg]

Every computer user would know what Google is, but not everyone knows every musician!

Often times a computer user just needs a little encouragement to realize that Google will tell them who any musician is.

Why should they care about a washed-up drug addict? But enough about Elvis...

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[camperdave]

Earlier, google was just saying she's dead - over and over and over. I wasn't even getting anything else when I googled "Amy Winehouse wikipedia". It seems to be giving some better results now. Apparently she's a drug addict/singer who's biggest claim to fame seems to be that she ODed recently.

Re:"last, gassy breath of a dying star"

[camazotz]

You're not the only one. Took me almost a day before I found out who she was and started getting all the jokes...

What you are seeing

[JoshuaZ]

The pretty picture in TFA is caused by the nebula being lit up by radiation (mainly ultraviolent) from the dying star at the center. As the star dies from running out of stuff which is easy to efficiently fuse in the core, the star undergoes contractions and expansions which push the outer layers away to form a nebula. The term "planetary nebula" is a bit misleading- they are called that because they look like planetary discs if one looks for them in a small telescope. Phil Plait has a pretty good summary of what we are looking at - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/25/a-glowing-bubbly-bauble-in-space/

Re:What you are seeing

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultraviolent radiation? Awesome!

Re:What you are seeing

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what it feels to be fisted ultra-violently. (LINK WARNING! LINK IS BROKEN!)

Re:What you are seeing

[symbolset]

While that's a nice story, it's probably mostly incorrect. Most planetary nebulae like this are created when a massive Population II star (over 120 solar masses) that formed in a metal-poor region that was usually deposited by a population III star, explodes in a pair instability supernova. This is a destructive explosion that usually completely obliterates the original star in one blast, having converted up to a fifth of its mass into iron or higher elements. It isn't some pulsing thing that happens over and over. If there's anything left at all it's likely another form of black dwarf consisting of the heaviest elements of the original star's core visible only in the infrared as it can't sustain fusion and its fissibles decompose. The blown off mass is quite important, as that's where we come from. The densest parts of the shell eventually congeal to become stars in a globular cluster. The globular form of the cluster is commonly seen orbiting galaxies rather than within them because the globular form is destroyed over time by tidal forces and interaction with surrounding masses.

This pulsing and contracting thing has been seen and is quite rare. It occurs when the mass of the star is much higher, and its gravity can recapture most of the mass that was thrown off. This would be visible as not one, but multiple shells of glowing gas.

The generations are given in reverse order. Generation I stars like our sun are the oldest, and are probably formed out of the peripheral debris of just such an explosion. Generation II stars are older, and we haven't yet spied a generation III star that formed of hydrogen and helium when more metallic elements didn't yet exist.

Weird

[JamesP]

It's weird to have Kepler to investigate it

Exactly because Kepler looks at the star, and through its variations detects planets.

No star, what's Kepler supposed to do?

Also, it doesn't zoom on the subjects, it examines several at once.

By all means point Hubble at the Nebula, not Kepler, unless I'm missing something

Re:Weird

[ToxicPig]

There is still a star. It is likely a white dwarf at this stage, or nearing that state. It can be seen in the photo as the white star in the very center of the gas sphere. IF Kepler even detects planets around the white dwarf, it would be extremely interesting (and scientifically significant) to determine what happened to the planets as the star went through its death throes. The inner planets would likely be consumed. The outer planets may have enjoy a brief stint in the Goldilocks Zone of the red giant, and may have very interesting chemistry. Life? Doubtful. Still, cool science to be done here in a somewhat isolated point in time in a star system's life.

Re:Weird

[JamesP]

Great! Now it makes sense

But I supposed this is for a 2nd stage Kepler observation, (unless it's already in its field)

Re:Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently never tried to see what happens when you add an unknown option to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

Yeah that's because my ALSA setup doesn't include a file named /etc/pulse/daemon.conf.

To try your suggestion I'd first have to install Pulseaudio. Since I agree that it sucks I won't be doing that. See how simple and internally consistent that is?

Now we're back around, full-circle, to where you still haven't explained why you have software installed if you don't like said software. I suggested masochism because it is a theory that neatly explains the facts.

Re:Weird

[JamesP]

Now we're back around, full-circle, to where you still haven't explained why you have software installed if you don't like said software. I suggested masochism because it is a theory that neatly explains the facts.

Simple, because removing it removes things I don't want removed

Well, fixed that and now PA is gone.

Re:Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

If you would use slackware, you wouldn't have to deal with a "package manager" trying to uproot half your system every time you try to remove something Pat deemed essential. Then again, Pat doesn't deem anything essential till it's out of beta (and usually at least a decade after that), so you might never have occasion to enjoy that benefit.

When Debian users had to run around replacing their SSH keys, I sit back and laugh at them getting what they deserve.
When Ubuntu installed a new audio infrastructure that breaks things for half the users, I sit back and laugh at them getting what they deserve.
When I got a laptop with a biometric scanner that basically requires PAM to be useful, I sat back and laughed at myself getting what I deserved.

Then I stopped installing slackware on my machines and moved to Arch.

Re:Weird

[mrtommyb]

Kepler looks at a region of the say covering around 115 square degrees. However, due to bandwidth limitations we are only able to download data for a limited number of pixels. We predefine around 150k pixel masks and download the data for these. While our primary mission is to find dips in brightness of stars caused by planets passing in front of them we also observe other types of time variable astrophysics. Scientists from around the world write proposals to observe interesting astrophysical phenomena and the best are chosen to have a pixel mask places around. This source was part of a proposal by a team lead by an astronomer called George Jacoby to observe planetary nebulae. There is no intention to do any planetary science with these observations.

Zombie Kepler

[wall0645]

First he will consume images of the nebula, then he will consume your brains.

"Spurred by the discovery of an amateur astronomer

[polymath69]

Hey, look everybody! It's an amateur astronomer!

Sad news ... Amy Winehouse, dead at 27

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss her - even if you didn't enjoy her work, there's no denying her contributions to popular culture. Truly an English icon.

Re:Sad news ... Amy Winehouse, dead at 27

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

My daughter and I were talking about it, and my wife asked: "what did she die of?". We just stared at her like she was from another planet.

Here is a link to the press release

[G3CK0]

Here is a link to the press release from Gemini Observatory: http://www.gemini.edu/node/11656

the obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Kronenberger was actually looking for some Uranus

makes sense

[hesaigo999ca]

I guess on a terraforming planet, this would be the start of getting some real self sustaining atmosphere and biological movement.....next step would be single cell organisms appearing, and so on....might be the next earth in a few million years if the moon is able to sustain enough rainfall...

Nubula?

[Taibhsear]

planetary nubula

Someone needs to flog their editor...