Invited_talk abstract details

The superior, stable, narrowband imaging capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope have made it a stunning nebular microscope and, more recently, a movie camera, that provide new insights into the evolution pathways of planetary nebulae. I will present a broad perspective of 20 years of fascinating and often very puzzling results that show that the ends of stellar lives are far more exciting than we might have imagined, and (accordingly) pose an array of challenging questions. The presentation ends with a review the array of new opportunities that will unfold in the next decade, from new observational tools (ALMA, JWST, and IR interferometry) to focussed theoretical questions well suited for a new era of new modeling tools with integrated 3-D magnetohydrodynamic hydrodynamics with radiation transfer and shock cooling. In short, Hubble observations and synergistic IR and molecular studies have vitalized the field of late stellar stellar astrophysics.