This is Where You Will Be After 5 Billion Years.

In about 5 billion years from now, our star, the Sun will run out of its fuel at the end of its life cycle, swells into a red giant and eats up the planets Mercury, Venus and possibly the earth. All the remaining planets, asteroids etc. will freely float off into space as there's no gravity from the sun to hold. After that, the sun will eventually collapse ejecting its outer layers in shells of gas and dust expanding into vastness of space. The core gets compressed and heated to more than 26,000 degree celsius and eventually becomes a white dwarf. That would be the fate of our star, the Sun. This entire phase of Hydrogen-burning main sequence to Red Giant to White Dwarf is called planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae represent late stage of stars evolution. They are beatutiful. Our future generations may look at our planetary nebula from distant planets orbiting different stars as the Sun dies. We will have long settled on other star systems.

There are an estimated 10,000 planetary nebulae in our Milky Way galaxy, of which roughly 1,500 have been cataloged, unseen rest hide behind interstellar dust. Many are extremely tiny and look identical to stars. Planetary nebulae are of different shapes as shown in real pictures above, but we do not yet know what causes those different shapes. Massive stars (at least 8 times of our Sun), at the end of their evolutionary path, explode into supernovas. The expanding shell of gas forms another type of nebula: a supernova remnant. The Crab Nebula (M1) is a good example as shown above

(Where is Crab nebula in above collection? Please google.)

When we die, out atoms and molecules get returned to earth, eventually consumed by stars that die expanding into space, mixing up with instellar clouds, forming next generation of stars and planetary sysems and life. You will live on forever. A Cosmic Journey.

Sreekanth Panjala
Science Popularizer | Writer