Insight Into: The Fate of the Sun

 

 

 

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach.

 

All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA, ESA, and STScI except:

 

·       Sun rotation movie courtesy of NASA/STEREO

·       Animation of Sun becoming a red dwarf courtesy of ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)

·       Animation of a planetary nebula’s expansion courtesy of ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser)

·       Planetary nebula fly-around animation courtesy of ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser)

·       Taurus constellation drawing from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, courtesy of the United States Naval Observatory

·       Abell 39 image courtesy of WIYN/NOAO/NSF

·       Bipolar planetary nebula formation animation by Thomas Goertel (STScI)

·       Garden Sprinkler Nebula image courtesy of ESA, A. Riera (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain) and P. Garcia-Lario (European Space Agency ISO Data Centre, Spain)

·       Garden sprinkler animation courtesy of ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)

·       Saturn Nebula (NGC 7009) image courtesy of Brad Ehrhorn/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF

·       Photo of observatory dome courtesy of Phil Massey, Lowell Observatory/NOAO/AURA/NSF

·       Animation of Hubble Space Telescope over Earth courtesy of ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)

·       Cat’s Eye Nebula ground-based image courtesy of Bruce Balick, University of Washington

·       Ring Nebula ground-based image courtesy of Daniel Folha and Simon Tulloch, Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma

·       Helix Nebula ground-based image copyright Edward M. Henry

·       Image of Magellanic Clouds courtesy of ESO/C. Malin

·       Image of Large Magellanic Cloud © Australian Astronomical Observatory; photograph by David Malin

 

 

Written by Vanessa Thomas and John Stoke

Designed by John Godfrey 

Music courtesy of Association Production Music

 

(SPEECH)

[DOWNBEAT MUSIC]

 

(DESCRIPTION)

A close-up of the Sun's surface. Gases bubble and burn intense orange and yellow.

 

Text, Our Sun will not live forever.

 

Someday, billions of years from now, the Sun will run out of the nuclear fuel that powers it.

 

The Sun in the distance.

 

Text, As the Sun's core contracts and grows hotter, the Sun's outer layers will swell.

 

The Sun grows, darkens and turns the Earth red.

 

Text, Our star will turn into a "red giant."

 

The Sun will puff up so much that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and perhaps even Earth.

 

The enlarged Sun engulfs and burns up the red Earth.

 

Gases expand in a sphere in space.

 

Text, Eventually, the Sun's outer layers will float away, forming clouds of gas and dust around the dying star.

 

The gases, which glow red, orange, blue, and purple, spread out in waves.

 

Text, Ultraviolet energy from the Sun's hot core will heat the gas and cause it to glow.

 

Text, Eventually, the Sun will cast off its outer layers, forming a planetary nebula. A white dwarf, the hot, dense core of the Sun that glows white-hot, will be left behind.