A dying star's glowing shell in Lyra offers a haunting preview of our solar system's fate — visible through a small telescope.

Planetary nebulae like the Crystal Ball Nebula (NGC 1514) are sort of like stellar obituaries. Though crystal balls supposedly reveal the future, the Crystal Ball Nebula tells us more about the past.

Astronomers suspect there is at least one other star interacting with the material cast off by the central dying star in NGC 6072, creating the abnormal appearance of this planetary nebula. Credit: ...

How long do planetary nebulae last on average? What are some of the controlling factors? Doug Kaupa Council Bluffs, Iowa To understand how long a planetary nebula remains visible, we first need to ...

Oregon stargazers have plenty of reasons to look up throughout August – a month marked by meteor showers, planetary conjunctions, and even a visible nebula. A formation known as the "dumbbell nebula" ...

The universe is a slow-changing place. While it's mostly true that the heavens and the deep-sky objects in it will look largely the same across an average human lifetime, there are dramatic examples ...

Planetary nebulae represent a brief but crucial phase in the life cycle of low- to intermediate-mass stars (1–8 M⊙). After exhausting hydrogen and helium in their cores, such stars ascend the ...