Exercise: The Ring

  1. How do planetary nebulae form?

    In MaxIm DL, open the R, B, and V images of the Ring nebula, located in the Labimage -> Nebula folder. Create a tricolor image of the nebula to answer the questions below. Refer to the guideposts in the Part 1 for tips on how to make a good image.

    Using the RGB images of the Ring Nebula, draw a diagram of the Ring and identify where the hydrogen gas is located.

    Using the small angle formula and the images, determine how large the Ring is. The image scale for Rigel, which is the telescope used to take the images of the Ring, is 0.73 arcseconds per pixel.
     
  2. If the angular size of the Ring Nebula is 46 arcseconds, determine the linear size, or radius. Give your answer in light years and km. Show your work.
     
  3. Assuming that the white dwarf associated with the Ring nebula is located at the center and that the nebula has been expanding at a constant rate of v=30km/s, find the age of the nebula. Show your work and give your answer in years.

    Typically, astronomers report masses of stars in solar units, meaning they divide the mass by the mass of the Sun, 1.989x1030 kg.

    Majors
     
  4. If the progenitor star that created the Ring nebula was 2.2 solar masses and the white dwarf is 0.6 solar masses, what percentage of its mass was ejected to created the nebula, assuming M progenitor =  M nebula + M white dwarf  ?
     
  5. What is the Chandrasekhar limit , and how much more mass does that white dwarf require to reach it?
nebulae
Ring Nebula as viewed by Hubble Space Telescope
Image Credit: NASA , ESA, O’Dell, Ferland, Henney, and Peimbert

 

Background

The Ring nebula is a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Lyra. It is located ~700 parsecs away. The image above was take with Hubble Space Telescope in a red filter, blue filter, and green filter.