A dying star offers a rare glimpse of how the universe recycles its raw materials

Astronomers have captured an unprecedented image of a cosmic recycling project in progress — fragments of a dying star being busted up, stripped, and absorbed into interstellar space.

A research team led by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum made the discovery while taking images of the Helix Nebula, a much-studied planetary nebulae located about 650 light-years from Earth. The researchers presented their findings in a new study published Aug. 12 in the journal Nature.

“We are seeing material shed near the end of a star’s life being broken apart and returned to the galaxy,” said Pieter van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study. He is also a member of the Dragonfly Focused Research Organization, a new type of nonprofit group that aims to build high-impact scientific infrastructure at the pace of a tech startup.

“That handoff — from recognizable stellar debris to the diffuse gas between the stars — has been very difficult to observe,” van Dokkum said. “Far in the future, the Sun will go through a similar process, and its material will enter the same cycle.”

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