What are we Looking at?

Solving the mystery of weird looking astronomical objects

with Frank Summers & Lisa Frattare

See Frank's Biography

See Lisa's Biography

Frank's "Hi!" Video

Lisa's "Hi !" Video

Your Challenges

HST has collected images of many strange looking objects.  It's the job of astronomers to try to work out what the images show.   This can be very difficult as the  two dimensional image may be of a complicated three dimensional object.  The objects are usually too far away to get any 3D information.   Working out the 3D shape of mystery objects can be a real challenge - as you are about to find out!

Here is a gallery of weird objects imaged by HST.   Click on the pictures for a larger view. 

All of the images above have something in common   They are of the same thing - dying stars.  

The images show stars in different stages of death and from different angles.  From looking at lots of images like these astronomers have managed to piece together what is happening.       

We believe that when a star runs out of fuel, it expands to become a red giant star.  It then ejects clouds of gas out into space.  The core of the star then shrinks to form a white dwarf.   This is a very hot star whose intense radiation causes the ejected clouds of gas to glow.  

Try to see if you can spot the white dwarf in the centre of the clouds above.   Sometimes its quite difficult if there are other stars in front of or behind the cloud.

The word ‘Nebula’ is Latin and means 'cloud'.  The word ‘Nebulae’ is plural of nebula.   Through a small telescope many of these dying stars look like really dim planets. So astronomers call them 'planetary nebulae'. There are even nebulae called the 'Ghost of Jupiter' and 'Saturn'.   See if you can find them on the net.

For an animation of a Planetary Nebula growing direct from the HST Newscentre click the link here and then click the ‘Real’ button (you will need RealPlayer installed).

To your challenges...