Our Sun's Legacy

So, we've finally managed to do all the math and we now know how our sun will die (long after we have become extinct or evolved into something else, perhaps something not at all dependent on this planet).

We already were fairly sure that the sun will swell into a red giant, consuming the Earth, and then shrink into a white dwarf.

But we now know that the sun is big enough to form a planetary nebula...something which will linger for a long time and perhaps be seen by sentient beings on other worlds.

I find something oddly comforting in that...