Planetary Nebula Formation.
After the ejection of the envelope (slow stellar wind, red arrows) of the AGB (red giant, Asymptotic Giant Branch) star (through thermal pulsing or some other mechanism), the bare core of the AGB star (hot white dwarf, center) is revealed. The temperature of the core is over 100,000 Kelvins initially and is an intense source of Ultraviolet radiation and a high-speed stream of particles (fast stellar wind, light blue arrows).
Fast wind moves away from the star at speeds of up to several thousand kilometers per second and easily overtake the ejected envelope of the AGB star. Fast wind compresses the ejected envelope of the star into a thin dense shell (cyan)
The UV radiation strongly ionizes the gas in the shell, ionized shell emits visible light
Date
28 March 2006 (original upload date)
Source
No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims).
Author
No machine-readable author provided.
Kurgus assumed (based on copyright claims).
Licensing
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
Information
Captions
Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents