NSF NOIRLab’s Gemini South telescopea recently captured an extremely rare double-lobe nebula, classified as IC 2220, located 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Carina. It’s nicknamed Toby Jug since the nebula somewhat resembles an English drinking vessel, thanks to a bipolar cloud of dust and gas created by the red-giant start at its center.
Aside from its nearly symmetrical double-looped structure and glowing stellar heart, we can see the red-giant star HR3126. The latter forms when a star burns through its supply of hydrogen in its core, but without the outward force of fusion, it begins to contract. This raises the core temperature and causes the star to then swell up to 400 times its original size, or in the case of HR3126, five times the mass of our Sun. Despite being just 50 million years old, the star’s mass allowed it to burn through its hydrogen supply and become a red giant much faster than the Sun.
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In about five billion years from now, when our Sun has burned through its supply of hydrogen, it too will become a red giant and eventually evolve into a planetary nebula. In the very distant future, all that will be left of our Solar System will be a nebula as vibrant as the Toby Jug Nebula with the slowly cooling Sun at its heart,” said the NSF’s NOIRLab.
