These violent explosions can destroy entire planets around the star or blast them away to wander through the galaxy. These explosions are called novas or supernovas, depending on their magnitude. Supernovas leave behind only the core of the star and a bunch of cosmic dust and gases.

Not only that, it's the force that ultimately destroys stars like the sun when they run out of hydrogen to burn. If a star is large enough — which is determined when it forms — gravity can turn it into a black hole. Nebulae are clouds of dust and gas that pervade the universe.

The way massive stars erode their home nebulae, clearing away the star-forming material in some regions of space and setting off new waves of star formation in others, plays a huge role in how ...

The Crab Nebula is a pulsar wind nebula associated with the 1054 supernova. It is located about 6,500 light-years from the Earth. [1]

When stars die, they throw off their outer layers, creating the clouds that birth new stars. When a medium-sized star begins to die, it sheds its outer layers forming a shell of gas and dust called a “planetary nebula,” but the term is misleading.