Cosmic Corpses: White Dwarf

Halloween's just around the corner, so here's my attempt at a Halloween-themed picture. And what's more 'halloweenish' than corpses?

What do you mean that's not the "right kind" of corpse?



No fluffy write up for this one, just an old, dead star about to reach the final stage of its undeath and finally cool into a white dwarf. Surrounding it, like a burial-shroud, is a planetary nebula, formed from its outer layers.

As planetary nebulae are a form of emission nebula, once the parent star stops producing ultraviolet radiation and ionizing the gas that makes it up, it will fade into invisibility, until such a time that a strong source of ionizing radiation (gamma rays, x rays, strong ultraviolet) passes by to light it up again.

 Our view in this case is from near a former Oort Cloud object, probably the size of Ceres.

Kerberos' Glare

Named after hellhound of ancient Helinik myth, this brown dwarf star marks the end of civilization and the beginning of the Dead Space, a region of the galaxy characterized by eldritch energies and terrifying anomalies.

Bathed in the star's ruddy glare, the Interceptor Alkeidis orbits Tartaros, Kerberos' middle planet, preparing to brave the Dead Space's unnatural depths and investigate the disappearance of the research ship Arkimedes.

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Long time, no post.

Because artist's block sucks. But I beat that down with a sledgehammer, the above is the result.

I had a few goals with this one. The first was to experiment with a new style of presentation, specifically a title and border. I think it works with this picture, at least.

I also wanted to try conveying a specific, deliberate emotional tone with this picture. YMMV on my success with this one.

It was also an excuse to run a couple of tests on myself, specifically on how well I could do a star (because stars have always been one of my weak points) and how well I could convey the vast, mind-numbing scale  of the universe. I like the result, but YYMV.

The fluff in the description is inspired by a recent obsession with Greek mythology, and not really connected with any of my other pictures.