A planetary nebula named because they looked like planets through small telescopes.
It was a star something like the Sun that reached the end of its life and blew off a strong wind of gas. Eventually, as more material left the star, deeper layers of the star got exposed. Eventually, the core was all that was left: a hot, small, dense object called a white dwarf.
It flooded the nebula with UV light, ionizing the gas and lighting it up. The complex interaction of the gas and the radiation produced the shape and the different colours.
But NGC 2818 is an oddball. When I first saw this picture I didn’t even think it was a planetary nebula, I thought it was a much larger gas cloud that forms stars. The shape is not much like other planetaries! Usually they are round, or hourglass shaped. This one is squashed and weird.
The colours are pretty much normal: the outer parts are loaded with nitrogen and are reddish, while the inner region is hotter, less dense and glows blue due to oxygen. The fingers or towers pointing toward the centre are due to the light and wind slamming into denser blobs of material. They’re a bit like sandbars that form in a current.
OTOH the Creator indicates that no stars have become defunct in any way, which leaves your opinion a matter fo religious consent. Literally a matter of belief. What is it to you that no man has ever counted the stars?
And that there is no archaeological affirmation?
OTOH there is still no Astronomical proof either so it works both ways.
Who cares, besides god?
Do you really want to be offensive not to me, I prefer people to be offensive (that way they can only find out how wrong they were when they remember me) and wake up one morning to find that you have put idiots off the truth by your ignominy?
How much better would it be for your Blog to be totally ignored in favour of bad astronomy?
So what are we looking at?
I don't know.
I only know my opinions are going to make me look stupid now and maybe no different later, if I don't leave it at that.
