Feast your eyes on this cosmic Compass constituent! The planetary nebula NGC 2818 is located in the southern constellation Pyxis, the Compass. Planetary nebulae contain clouds of dust and gas formed from the outer layers of a star cast off during its death. Over tens of thousands of years, planetary nebulae gradually fade, while the hot, remnant stellar core cools off, becoming a white dwarf. Scientists theorize that a similar fate will befall our Sun in about 5 billion years, when it runs out o

Jewel Bug Nebula 💎🪲 NGC 7027, affectionately called the “Jewel Bug” Nebula, is a planetary nebula – a collection of clouds of dust and gas cast off by a dying star. Hubble’s near-ultraviolet observations of this nebula will help reveal how much dust obscures its central star and how hot the star really is. The Jewel Bug Nebula is located around 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Image credit: NASA, ESA and J. Kastner (RIT) Music credit: “Inertia” by Lincoln Jaeger [PRS] via At

Not that long time ago, NGC 7027's central star was identified in a new wavelength of light — near-ultraviolet — for the first time by using Hubble's unique capabilities. The near-ultraviolet observations will help reveal how much dust obscures the star and how hot the star really is. This object, which resembles a colorful jewel bug, is a visibly diffuse region of gas and dust that may be the result of ejections by closely orbiting binary stars that were first slowly sloughing off material over