US EditionCardiff University Team Helps Find Mysterious Iron Bar in Space
The iron bar inside the Ring Nebula spans 500 times Pluto's orbit and holds iron mass comparable to Mars, discovered using WEAVE's integral-field spectroscopy.
- An international team led by researchers at UCL and Cardiff University uncovered a previously hidden bar of iron inside the Ring Nebula, reported in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
- About 4,000 years ago the Ring Nebula formed when a sun-like star expelled its outer layers, and iron escaped detection until integral-field spectroscopy mapped element-specific emission.
- Spanning roughly 500 times Pluto's orbit, the iron structure forms a narrow strip in the nebula's inner region and contains iron mass comparable to Mars, detected using WEAVE's LIFU mode on the William Herschel Telescope.
- At present, scientists cannot distinguish whether the iron bar is stellar ejecta or remains of a rocky planet, and the team plans follow-up WEAVE observations to analyze composition and motion.
- Backed by an international consortium and broad funding, WEAVE operates on the William Herschel Telescope and is set to run eight major surveys over five years, with Dr. Roger Wesson predicting more discoveries.
14 Articles
14 Articles
There it is. Perfectly visible in the image, a kind of red 'bar', an elongated cloud made of iron and passing from part to part one of the most known and best observed nebulae by scientists. It seems incredible that, at this point, the night sky is still able to surprise us even in the places we thought we knew best. But it has happened again.A team of European astronomers, led by researchers from University College of London and the University …
A Colossal Iron Mystery Has Been Discovered in the Ring Nebula
A colossal bar of iron hidden inside the Ring Nebula may be the ghostly remains of a planet destroyed by a dying star. An international team of astronomers led by researchers at UCL (University College London) and Cardiff University has uncovered an unexpected feature inside the well-known Ring Nebula. Hidden within the glowing structure is [...]
der Standard AT
der Standard DEIn the iconic ring nebula a previously unknown structure was discovered, which contains a huge amount of iron
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