When a star runs out of fuel, it sheds its outer layers of gas and, if it doesn't explode in a supernova, forms a glowing shell of ionized gas that expands into space. Shells like these are known as ...

NASA, Donald Walter/South Carolina State University/Paul Scowen/ Brian Moore/Arizona State University A glimpse up at the night sky will reveal a seemingly endless landscape of twinkling stars, but ...

As we continue to break new ground in the field of cosmology, the importance of carefully categorizing the objects we see comes into focus. Part of this stems from the fact that, increasingly, we find ...

Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) New Technology Telescope (NTT) and the Hubble Space Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our ...

Compass needles? Astronomers have discovered something weird in the Milky Way's galactic bulge - a population of planetary nebula are all mysteriously pointing in the same direction. They noticed the ...

Nebulae are interstellar clouds of gas and dust, initially mistaken for galaxies by early astronomers. Diffuse nebulae lack defined shapes and include reflection nebulae (reflecting starlight), ...

New images from the Hubble Space Telescope show two beautiful planetary nebulae, known as the Butterfly Nebula and the Jewel Bug Nebula. These two objects are of interest to scientists not only ...

Bipolar, binary planetary nebula have aligned themselves with the galactic "bulge" while glowing with ionized gas, putting on quite a show. Matt is a staff writer for DiscoverMagazine.com, where he ...

By analyzing the data from the SuperCOSMOS Hα Survey (SHS) and from the Gaia satellite, astronomers have inspected a bipolar ...