New ideas about how stars die help solve a decades-old mystery
Simulations show even small stars can heat up fast enough to form colorful planetary nebulae

GOING OUT IN STYLE New insights into the death throes of sunlike stars help solve a decades-old mystery about planetary nebulae, such as the seven captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in this composite image.
Clockwise from top left: D. Thompson/Large Binocular Telescope Observatory, C.R. O’Dell/Vanderbilt Univ., NASA, ESA; Hubble Heritage Team/STScl/AURA, NASA, ESA; Hubble SM4 ERO Team, NASA, ESA; Hubble SM4 ERO Team, NASA, ESA; Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger /JPL, the WFPC2 Science Team, NASA; Andrew Fruchter, the ERO team/STScI, NASA, ESA; Hubble SM4 ERO Team, NASA, ESA