The Toby Jug Nebula, a unique bipolar reflection nebula, has been imaged by the Gemini South telescope and provides valuable information about the evolution of red giants, including the future transformation of our Sun.

The bright nebula IC 2220, nicknamed the Toby Jug Nebula because it resembles an old English drinking vessel, is a rare astronomical find. Located about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation of Carius, this reflection nebula is a bipolar or bipolar gas and dust cloud created and illuminated by the red giant star at its center. This end-of-life stage of red giants is relatively short and celestial structures forming around them are rare, making the Toby Jag Nebula an excellent example of stellar evolution.

Imaging and analysis

Taken by the Gemini South telescope, half of the Gemini International Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, this image shows the Toby Jug Nebula’s extraordinary, nearly symmetrical, double-ring structure and glowing star heart. These features are unique to red giants transitioning from aging stars to planetary nebulae and therefore provide astronomers with valuable information about the evolution of low- and medium-mass stars near the end of their lives and the cosmic structures they form.

Progenitor Star

At the center of the Tobi Jaga Nebula is its ancestor, the red giant star HR3126. Red giants form when a star burns up hydrogen reserves in its core. Without an external fusion force, the star begins to contract. This increases the temperature of the core and causes the star to swell up to 400 times its original size. Although HR3126 is significantly younger than our Sun – only 50 million years old compared to the Sun’s 4.6 billion years – it is five times larger. This allowed the star to burn off its hydrogen reserves and become a red giant much faster than the Sun.

nebula formation

As HR 3126 grew in size, its atmosphere expanded and began to shed its outer layers. The ejected star material flowed into the surrounding space, forming a remarkable structure of gas and dust that reflected light from the central star. Detailed infrared studies of the Toby Jug Nebula have shown that silicon dioxide (silica) is the most likely compound to reflect HR3126’s light.

theory and observation

Astronomers suggest that bipolar structures such as those seen in the Toby Jug Nebula are the result of an interaction between the central red giant and a companion binary star. However, previous observations did not detect such a HR3126 satellite. Instead, astronomers observed an extremely compact disk of material around the central star. This discovery suggests that the former binary companion may have fragmented into a disk that may have triggered the formation of the surrounding nebula.

future results

In about five billion years, when our Sun runs out of hydrogen, it too will become a red giant and eventually turn into a planetary nebula. In the very distant future, only a nebula as bright as the Toby Jag Nebula will remain from our solar system and slowly cool at the center of the Sun. Source

notes

1. The term “planetary nebulae” is a misnomer; they are not associated with planets. The term was probably first used in the 1780s by astronomer William Herschel, who noticed their round, planet-like shape while observing with early telescopes.

The image was processed by NOIRLab’s Communication, Education and Interaction team as part of the NOIRLab Legacy Imaging Program. The observations were made at Cerro Pachon in Chile, off Southern Gemini, using one of Gemini’s twin multiple object spectrographs (GMOS). While spectrographs are designed to separate light into different wavelengths for research, GMOS spectrographs also have powerful imaging capabilities, as this exceptional image of the Toby Jug Nebula shows.