What will happen when the sun dies: Know all about it

An international team of astronomers, including Professor Albert Zijlstra from the University of Manchester, believe they have figured out how the sun will die - it ends in a blaze of glory known as a planetary nebula.

”When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust - known as its envelope - into space,” Professor Zijslra said, adding, “The envelope can be as much as half the star’s mass. This reveals the star’s core, which by this point in the star’s life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying.”

The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Ninety per cent all-stars die as planetary nebulae as they collapse from red giants to white dwarfs - but scientists were unsure if the sun had enough mass to create one. However, a new data model which predicts the life cycle of stars helped scientists establish what the final status of the sun would be. The research also serves as a model to predict how much gas and dust stars eject into space when they die.

”When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust - known as its envelope - into space,” Professor Zijslra said. “The envelope can be as much as half the star’s mass. This reveals the star’s core, which by this point in the star’s life is running out of fuel, eventually turning off and before finally dying,” he said.

As the sun burns the last of its hydrogen, it will turn into a red giant and expand to 250 times its current size, certainly destroying Earth - though the planet will have long been uninhabitable by the time it comes. This will leave behind a ghostly glowing ring of interstellar gas and dust, scientists say as reported in Sky News website.

”It is only then the hot core makes the ejected envelope shine brightly for around 10,000 years - a brief period in astronomy. This is what makes the planetary nebula visible. Some are so bright that they can be seen from extremely large distances measuring tens of millions of light years, where the star itself would have been much too faint to see,” the professor said.