Crashes in between planetesimals– little, strong things formed out of cosmic dust left over from the production of a planetary system around a star– can produce this type of excess emission, but SOFIA and ALMA stopped working to see the large dust grains needed for such objects to exist, ruling out one alternative. The astronomers also didnt find any of the carbon monoxide gas or silicon monoxide particles characteristic of the gas disks that can surround evolving post-main-sequence stellar systems that precede items like the Helix Nebula, leaving out another prospective explanation.
Various hairs of proof place stringent restraints on the size, structure, and orbit of the source of the emission, and eventually come together to recognize the same culprit: dust– from full-fledged planets damaged during the nebulas development– returning toward its inner areas.
” In piecing together the shapes and size of the excess emission, and what those homes presume regarding the dust grains in the white dwarf environment, we conclude that an interfered with planetary system is the very best option to the concern of how the Helix Nebulas infrared excess was produced and preserved,” said Jonathan Marshall, the lead author on the paper and a scientist at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Once they recognized the remnants of a previous planetary system are at the origin of the infrared emission, they determined the number of grains need to be returning to the Helix Nebulas center to account for the emission: about 500 million over the 100,000-year life time of the planetary nebula, conservatively.
SOFIAs Role
SOFIAs abilities fell right into a gap in between the previous Spitzer and Herschel observations, permitting the group to understand the shape and brightness of the dust, and enhancing the resolution of how far it expands.
” This gap lay around where we anticipated the dust emission to peak,” Marshall said. “Pinning down the shape of the dust emission is important to constraining the properties of the dust grains that produce that emission, so the SOFIA observation helped improve our understanding.”
Though the researchers are not planning any follow-up observations of the Helix Nebula in specific, this research study is a piece in a larger effort to use observations to understand what takes place to planetary systems once their star progresses past the main sequence. The group wants to study other late-stage stars utilizing similar techniques.
Reference: “Evidence for the Disruption of a Planetary System During the Formation of the Helix Nebula” by Jonathan P. Marshall, Steve Ertel, Eric Birtcil, Eva Villaver, Francisca Kemper, Henri Boffin, Peter Scicluna and Devika Kamath, 19 December 2022, The Astronomical Journal.DOI: 10.3847/ 1538-3881/ ac9d90.
SOFIA was a joint task of NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR. DLR provided the telescope, set up aircraft maintenance, and other support for the objective. NASAs Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley managed the SOFIA mission, program, and science operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart. The airplane was preserved and operated by NASAs Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California. SOFIA achieved complete functional capability in 2014 and concluded its last science flight on September 29, 2022.
The spectral energy circulation of WD 2226-210 superposed on an image of the Helix Nebula from Hubble Space Telescope. Helix Nebula.
As soon as a star progresses beyond the main sequence– the longest phase of outstanding advancement, throughout which the radiation generated by nuclear fusion in a stars core is balanced by gravitation– the fate of any planetary system it may have had is an enigma. Astronomers usually do not understand what occurs to planets beyond this point, or whether they can even make it through.
In a paper released recently in The Astronomical Journal, researchers utilized brand-new data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in addition to archival data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, to study the Helix Nebula. These observations provide one prospective description for the fate of these planetary remains.
A Process of Elimination, and a Disruptive Origin
The Helix Nebula is an old planetary nebula– expanding, radiant gas ejected from its host star after its main-sequence life ended. The nebula has a really young white dwarf at its center, but this central white dwarf is strange.
The spectral energy circulation of WD 2226-210 superposed on an image of the Helix Nebula from Hubble Space Telescope. Helix Nebula. The Helix Nebula is an old planetary nebula– expanding, radiant gas ejected from its host star after its main-sequence life ended. The nebula has a very young white dwarf at its center, however this main white dwarf is peculiar. NASAs Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley handled the SOFIA mission, program, and science operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart.