From stars dying as supernovae, we now turn to stars dying as planetary nebulae. A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array has found an aged star not too different from the Sun that is just beginning to exhale its atmosphere. In this image, we can clearly see in blue, high-velocity jets blowing from the star’s poles and interacting with dusty clouds that are shown in orange. This is a system just starting to form a planetary nebula, and in a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal led by Daniel Tafoya, they postulate that the high-speed jets may have only turned on in the past 60 years. This object was part of a large survey being conducted to try and catch planetary nebulae in all stages of formation, and if we’re lucky, ALMA will allow more of these baby systems to be found. 

Link to Press Release