HEIC0703: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 17:00 (CEST)/11:00 AM EDT 13 February, 
2007
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0703.html

Photo release: 
The colourful demise of a Sun-like star

13-February-2006 A brand new image taken with Hubble’s Wide Field 
Planetary Camera 2 shows the planetary nebula NGC 2440 - the chaotic 
structure of the demise of a star.  

This image, just taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows 
the colourful “last hurrah” of a star like our Sun. The star is ending 
its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon 
around the star’s remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star 
makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is 
the white dot in the centre. Our Sun will eventually burn out and 
shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years. 

Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called 
planetary nebulae. The objects have nothing to do with planets. 
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century astronomers called them the name 
because through small telescopes they resembled the disks of the 
distant planets Uranus and Neptune. The planetary nebula in this image 
is called NGC 2440. The white dwarf at the centre of NGC 2440 is one of 
the hottest known, with a surface temperature of more than 200,000 
degrees Celsius. The nebula’s chaotic structure suggests that the star 
shed its mass episodically. During each outburst, the star expelled 
material in a different direction. This can be seen in the two bowtie-
shaped lobes. The nebula also is rich in clouds of dust, some of which 
form long, dark streaks pointing away from the star. NGC 2440 lies 
about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the 
constellation Puppis.

The material expelled by the star glows with different colours 
depending on its composition, its density and how close it is to the 
hot central star. Blue samples helium; blue-green oxygen, and red 
nitrogen and hydrogen. The image was taken 6 February, 2007 with 
Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

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Notes for editors
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation 
between ESA and NASA.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI)
Acknowledgment: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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For more information, please contact:

Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6306
Cellular: +49-173-3872-621
E-mail: lars@eso.org

Keith Noll
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-1828
E-mail: noll@stsci.edu

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-4514
E-mail: villard@stsci.edu