Startlingly Fast Evolution of the Stingray Planetary Nebula and its Central Star, V839 Arae

TL;DR

The Stingray planetary nebula and its central star V839 Arae have undergone rapid evolution since the 1980s, with significant changes in brightness and structure, but recent high-resolution imaging shows no ongoing high-velocity mass loss.

Contribution

This study provides the first detailed imaging and analysis of the Stingray nebula's evolution over several decades, revealing its rapid fading and complex changes without ongoing mass ejection.

Findings

No high-velocity mass loss observed in 2016 images.

Different emission lines and structures fade at varying rates.

The nebula is expected to become invisible within a century or two.

Abstract

The planetary nebula (PN) called the Stingray (PN G331.3$-$12.1) suddenly turned on in the 1980s, and its central star (V839 Ara) started a fast evolution with large amplitudes in magnitude, surface temperature, and surface gravity, perhaps as part of a late thermal pulse causing a loop in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram. With these fast changes, we have taken images with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016. We do not see the massive high-velocity mass loss of the 1980s, either close in to the central star, or as clumps or changes in the nebula far from the star, or as localized or general increases in the emission-line flux caused by the shocks of the outflowing ejecta ramming into the slow-moving PN shell. We think that the lack of seeing the outgoing material is because the relatively modest total mass had already suffused the PN before the first resolved imaging in 1992, and it was the shocks from this impact that initially ionized the Stingray starting in the 1980s. We also quantify the complex fast fading of the Stingray, with each emission line and each structure having different fade rates, with half-lives ranging from 3 to 29 years. In a century or two, the PN will fade to invisibility. With this complex fading of different structures, it is impossible to derive any expansion rate for the PN. The central star had its brightness roughly constant from 1996 to 2016, but with substantial erratic variability from 15.50 to 14.18 mag in the $V$ band.