#stellar collapse

The Butterfly Nebula

Also known as NGC 6302, it's a beautiful example of a bi-polar planetary nebula.

Although obscured by a lane of dust (at the centre), the collapsed white dwarf is among the hottest stars known, at over 250,000'c. The assumption is the star must have been close to the Chandrasekhar limit, around 1.4 times the mass of our Sun.

Faint evidence of previous outbursts seem to reveal this final mass ejection was not it's first, it could be the star shed mass over a period of time before the final collapse set in place. This is to be expected, as gravitational contraction will increase the range of what can be fused, and hydrogen sat around the core that hadn't yet undergone fusion will now have sufficient pressure to do so, causing a period of spluttering between collapse and fusion, that gravity will ultimately win out.

Mech wolf form concepts for Ida I made back in 2021, was playing around with the idea but didn’t end up keeping it for the story, though I still enjoy the design.

WR40

There's stars and then there's Wolf Rayet stars ! WR 40 is one such star, in the constellation of Carina, it's at least 100 times the mass of our Sun and a million times more luminous but for all that energy, it lives but a blink of an eye compared.

In the image above, you can see the giant star at the centre, but the nebula around it is the star throwing off it's mass periodically in violent nova like eruptions and general winds.

Most WR stars have companions an so when they go supernova, it tends to be a type 1b and c, meaning the supernova occurs due to core collapse, but the actual star has already lost it's hydrogen and helium in the outbursts you can see going on in the image.