Artist's concept showing carbon balls ejecting out from a dying white star in a planetary nebula.
Artist's concept showing carbon balls coming out from the type of object where they were discovered, a dying star and the material it sheds, known as a planetary nebula. The official name of these carbon balls is a buckminsterfullerene, and often referred to as buckyballs. Buckyballs are made up of 60 carbon atoms organized into spherical structures that resemble soccer balls. The Spitzer Space Telescope was able to find convincing signs of buckyballs using its sensitive infrared vision. The telescope found the molecules, as well as their elongated, rugby-ball-like relatives, called C70, in the material around a dying star, or planetary nebula, called Tc 1. The star at the center of Tc 1 was once similar to our sun but as it aged, it sloughed off its outer layers, leaving only a dense white dwarf star. Astronomers believe buckyballs were created in shed layers of carbon that blew off the star. Tc 1 does not show up that well in images, so a picture of the NGC 2440 nebula was used in this artist's conception.
Size: 3563px × 2850px
Photo credit: © Stocktrek Images / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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