Bibcode
Corradi, R.
Bibliographical reference
The Newsletter of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING Newsl.), issue no. 4, p. 18-20
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3
2001
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
In recent years, a lot of effort has been put into better understanding
the physical processes which lead a sunlike star, at the end of its
evolution, to lose its gaseous envelope and die as a slowly cooling
white dwarf. The most spectacular phase of this late evolution is the
one in which the ejected envelope is made fluorescent by the energetic
radiation from the naked stellar core, in which the last thermonuclear
reactions take place. These ionised nebulae, historically (and
misleadingly) called 'planetary nebulae', are among the most beautiful
objects in the Universe, and are the key to understanding phenomena
which are relevant to many fields of astrophysics and particle physics.