4099 - MILKYWAY GALAXY - gas clouds at the center?

 

-    4099  -  MILKYWAY  GALAXY   -  gas clouds at the center?    A mysterious alignment of stellar "ghosts" from dead stars haunts the heart of the Milky Way. They exist in the form of planetary nebulas, clouds of gas that are expelled by dying stars at the end of their lives. These can resemble butterflies or hourglasses with the smoldering remains of the star at their heart.

-------------  4099  -  MILKYWAY  GALAXY   -  gas clouds at the center? 

-    A mysterious alignment of stellar "ghosts" from dead stars haunts the heart of the Milky Way. They exist in the form of planetary nebulas, clouds of gas that are expelled by dying stars at the end of their lives. These can resemble butterflies or hourglasses with the smoldering remains of the star at their heart.

-   ( Also see Review 4098    -  PLANETARY  NEBULAE  -  at center of Milkyway?)

-

-    The sun, when it runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion at its core and after it has swelled out as a red giant and swallowed the inner planets in around 5 billion years, will leave similar gaseous remains around a white dwarf star.

-

-    Astronomers know a great deal about “planetary nebulas”, but an arrangement of such clouds in the galactic bulge at the center of our Milky Way galaxy has still been a puzzle.  

-

-    These planetary nebulas offer a window into the heart of our galaxy and this insight deepens our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of the Milky Way's bulge region.  Studying 136 planetary nebulas in the thickest part of the Milky Way, the galactic bulge, with the Very Large Telescope (VLT), they discovered that each is unrelated and comes from different stars, which died at different times and spent their lives in different locations.

-

-   The researchers also found that the shapes of these planetary nebulas line up in the sky in the same way.  They are also aligned almost parallel to the plane of the Milky Way.

-

-   What wasn't known until now was the fact that this alignment is only present in the planetary nebulas that have a close stellar companion. In these cases, the companion stars orbit the stellar remnant at the heart of the planetary nebulas at a distance closer than our solar system's innermost planet Mercury is to the sun.

-

-    The alignment is absent in planetary nebulas that lack such a companion star, and this implies that the alignment could be created as a result of the rapid orbital motion of the companion star, which may even end up orbiting inside the remains of the main star. The observed alignment of the planetary nebulas may also reveal that close binary systems form with their orbits inclined in the same plane.

-

The formation of stars in the bulge of our galaxy is a complex process that involves various factors such as gravity, turbulence, and magnetic fields.

-

-

July 20,  2023       MILKYWAY  GALAXY   -  gas clouds at the center?           4099

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                                        

--------  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ---

---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 

--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews

---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------

--------------------- ---  Friday, July 21, 2023  ---------------------------------