NGC 2818 is a planetary nebula located in the southern constellationPyxis (The Compass). It consists largely of glowing gases from the star's outer layers ejected during the final stages of its life when it had run out of the fuel necessary to sustain its core fusion processes. The remnants of its core will remain as a white dwarf.[3] The mass of the nebula is estimated at about 0.6 solar masses, while the progenitor star was likely about 2.3 times the mass of the Sun.[4]
NGC 2818 presents a complex morphology, and overall has bipolar structure, making it a bipolar nebula. The two lobes are somewhat broken and irregular. There are also filamentary structures radiating from the center, and near the center of the nebula, several cometary knots.[4]
Partly because of their small total mass, open clusters have relatively poor gravitational cohesion. Consequently, open clusters tend to disperse after a relatively short time, typically some 10 million years, because of external gravitational influences amid other factors. Under exceptional conditions, open clusters can remain intact for up to 100 million years.
Theoretical models predict that planetary nebulae can form from main-sequence stars of between 8 and 1 solar masses, which puts their age at 40 million years and older. Although there are a few hundred known open clusters within that age range, a variety of reasons limit the chances of finding a member of an open cluster in a planetary nebula phase. One such reason is that the planetary nebula phase for more massive stars belonging to younger clusters is on the order of thousands of years - a blink of the eye in cosmic terms. Only one association has been established between open clusters and nearby nebulae, the extremely distant nebula PHR 1315-6555.[8]
