Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2019

20 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019 SPACE CHRONICLES lished in the pres- tigious scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). Planetary nebulae are the glowing shells of gas and dust ejected from Sun-like stars to- wards the ends of their lives. “In many cases, we see that the ejection is driven by the in- teraction between the progenitor star and a close com- panion, and this leads to the vast array of elaborate shapes and struc- tures we see in the nebulae” , explains Jones. The study focused on the planetary nebula M3-1, a firm candidate to have been the product of a binary system due to its Two stars almost touching found inside a planetary nebula by IAC A n interna- tional team of astron- omers, led by the Instituto de Astro- física de Canarias (IAC) and Universi- dad de La Laguna (ULL) investigator David Jones, have discovered a bi- nary system with an orbital period of just a little over three hours. The discovery, which involved several years of observing campaigns, is not only surprising due to the extremely short orbital pe- riod but also in that, due to their proximity to one another, the sys- tem may result in a nova explosion be- fore the short-lived nebula has dissi- pated. The results of the study were pub- A n image obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope of the planetary nebula M3-1, the central star of which is actually a binary system with one of the shortest orbital periods known. [David Jones / Daniel López - IAC]