Talk:847: Stingray Nebula
The female teacher from the Archie comic strip?--188.8.131.52 02:38, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Dwarfs are a pun referring both to dwarf stars and to Middle-Earth dwarves.--184.108.40.206 19:22, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
The Stingray Nebula, in the constellation Ara, is the youngest known planetary nebula in the galaxy. It was formed by an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) B1 supergiant, which blasted out the gas while becoming a white dwarf in 1987. Well, it happened about 18,000 years ago, but the light of the incident reached the Earth in 1987.
Unless nebula are just formed by lensing of the star's outer layers combined with earth being in the right line-up to see; in in which case we have no idea how far the thing is nor when it was.