The Elegant Beauty of a Planetary Nebula

In a partnership between amateur and professional astronomers, the recent discovery of a dying star’s last gasps could help resolve a decades-old debate among astronomers. That is, are stellar companions key to the formation and structure of planetary nebulae?

The discovery, by Austrian amateur astronomer Matthias Kronberger, is featured at an International Astronomical Union symposium on planetary nebulae this week in Spain’s Canary Islands. The research team’s work features a striking image of the new nebula obtained with the Gemini Observatory.

Not coincidently, the location of the new nebula (named Kronberger 61, or Kn 61, after its discoverer) is within a relatively small patch of sky being intensely monitored by NASA’s Kepler planet finding mission. Kepler's goal is to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars. In the process, the effects of other close stellar and/or planetary companions are detectable.

“Kn 61 is among a rather small collection of planetary nebulae that are strategically placed within Kepler’s gaze,” said Orsola De Marco of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia who is the author of a 2009 paper speculating on how companion stars or even planets may influence and shape the intricate structure seen in many planetary nebulae. “Explaining the puffs left behind when medium sized stars like our Sun expel their last-breaths is a source of heated debate among astronomers, especially the part that companions might play,” says De Marco, “it literally keeps us up at night!”

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http://www.gemini.edu/node/11656