The Calabash Nebula, pictured here — which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 — is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the sun. This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the star going through a rapid transformation from a red giant to a planetary nebula, during which it blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space. The recently ejected material is spat out in opposite directions with immense speed — the gas shown in yellow is moving close to one million kilometers per hour (621,371 miles per hour).

Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution because it occurs within the blink of an eye — in astronomical terms. Over the next thousand years the nebula is expected to evolve into a fully-fledged planetary nebula.

The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains a lot of sulphur, an element that, when combined with other elements, smells like a rotten egg — but luckily, it resides over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis.

Scientists have detected a black hole that's taken a record-breaking decade to devour a star — and it's still chewing away.

The food fest is happening in a small galaxy 1.8 billion light-years from Earth.

University of New Hampshire research scientist Dacheng (dah-CHENG) Lin said that black hole feeding frenzies have been observed since the 1990s, but they've lasted just a year. At 11 years and counting, this is the longest known one yet.

Lin and his team used data from orbiting X-ray telescopes to study the monstrous munching. X-ray flares erupt when a star gets swallowed by a black hole and cooked millions of degrees. Black holes clearly like their stars well done.

"We have witnessed a star's spectacular and prolonged demise," Lin said in a statement.

The X-rays coming from this black hole surpass expectations in another way.

"For most of the time we've been looking at this object, it has been growing rapidly," said the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' James Guillochon, a co-author. "This tells us something unusual — like a star twice as heavy as our Sun — is being fed into the black hole."

The binge eating by this particular black hole began around July 2005. Based on computer models, the feasting should taper off over the next decade.

The discovery was reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sends its love this Valentine’s Day with photos of Saturn’s beautiful rings, moons and polar vortex.

The Cassini-Huygens mission — a joint collaboration led by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — launched in 1997 and is in its final year in orbit around Saturn. Throughout its stay at the ringed planet, Cassini has captured extraordinary photos that are published in an image gallery online. Anyone can download the photos to create artistic masterpieces of their own.

“We’re so gratified that Cassini’s images have inspired people to work with the pictures themselves to produce such beautiful creations,” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement from NASA. [Valentine’s Day in Space: Cosmic Love Photos]

This color-enhanced photo, taken by Cassini on Jan. 26, 2014, offers a spectacular view of the strange hexagonal storm swirling above Saturn’s north pole, as well as the gas giant’s iconic rings and banded atmosphere.

Before Cassini’s mission at Saturn comes to an end in September, NASA is launching a campaign called “Cassini Inspires” to celebrate the curiosity and wonder the mission has instilled in both the public and the scientific community. With this campaign, people are invited to share an original Saturn-inspired painting, music, poetry, fiction, video or other media on social media with the tag #CassiniInspires.

“It’s been truly wonderful for us to feel the love for Cassini from the public,” Spilker said in the statement from NASA. “The feeling from those of us on the mission is mutual.”

Nasa is to host a major press conference on Wednesday to reveal a 'discovery beyond our solar system'.

The space agency says the secretive event, will 'present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets'.

It raises hopes that NASA could reveal details of exoplanets capable of holding life.

ReadingPhilly wrote:

Nasa is to host a major press conference on Wednesday to reveal a 'discovery beyond our solar system'.

The space agency says the secretive event, will 'present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets'.

It raises hopes that NASA could reveal details of exoplanets capable of holding life.

slugsrbad wrote:Plagerizing a USA Today article I'm reading on my phone. Scientists have discovered a cluster of planets remebling the core of our solar system w/ SEVEN (my emphasis) Earth-sized worlds potentially capable of hosting liquid water, and therefore, life. Planets are 40 light years away, they are all rocky planets which is a better bet than a Jupiter-esque gas planet from hosting life (as we know it). Article says that three of the planets bask in just hte rihgt amoutn of energy from their star that oceans could wash their surfaces if they have atmospheres; five of the planets are almost exactly the same width of Earth, the other two are a bit smaller.

td11 wrote:the concept of a light year is still mind blowing to me

Slowhand wrote:Why don't we just go there and find out for sure?

WheelsFellOff wrote:700k based on Voyager, which while the fastest object we have made, it's not the fastest we could make. Especially as it was designed for exploration within the solar system and has reached that speed through a series of gravitational slingshots. Using a propulsion system with a higher delta-V but lower thrust for a separate, exo-solar stage would allow constant acceleration once free of the sun's gravity well would see that number plummet. Realistically, over that kind of distance we could accelerate an object to a significant percentage of the speed of light. The bigger problem really is slowing down at the destination and trying to insert into some kind capture orbit for a system we'd have very little information on at the time the maneuver would need to be performed.

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:so we only have 46 years to invent the warp drive technology if Star Trek is correct