By Ruth Whitehead
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It looks like the gateway to heaven - but this stunning image taken by the Hubble Telescope has captured the dramatic phase of a dying star's lifespan when it runs out of nuclear fuel and emits beams of light like searchlights.
Swansong in light: this Hubble image of the Egg Nebula shows one of the best views to date of the brief but dramatic phase in a star's life when it runs out of nuclear fuel
It's called the preplanetary or protoplanetary nebula stage and this image shows the Egg Nebula, which was the first preplanetary nebula to be discovered, less than 40 years ago. Scientists admit many aspects of this phenomenon remain a mystery.
NASA and the European Space Agency, who run the telescope, explained that over a few thousand years the hot remains of the aging star in the centre of the nebula, or cloud of dust, heat it up, 'excite' the gas, and make it glow.Â
At the centre of the image, hidden in the thick dust cloud, is the nebula’s central star. Four beams of light shine out from it through the nebula like searchlights. It is thought that ring-shaped holes in the thick cocoon of dust, carved by jets coming from the star, let the beams of light emerge through the otherwise opaque cloud. They said the cloud had an 'onion-like' layered structure which is caused by bursts of material being ejected from the dying star every few hundred years.
Starry, starry night: this Hubble image released on Tuesday shows a young group of stars in a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way
Circle of light: this Hubble image from 2011 shows the unprecedented transition of a supernova to a supernova remnant. It was the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years Â
The agencies add that because the preplanetary nebulae have a short lifespan, there are relatively few of them in existence at any one time. Moreover, they are very faint, and need powerful telescopes to be seen, which is why they have only been discovered comparatively recently.
Astronomers cannot tell exactly how big the Egg Nebula is because they only know its distance to earth very approximately. It may be larger and further away, or smaller but nearer. It is estimated to be around 3,000 light-years from earth.Â
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Heaven? who is kidding who?
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I cannot understand why people need some faith/religious based story to add meaning to their lives when the wonder and beauty of nature on our Earth and in the Universe is enough to bring into perspective our own existence and the absolute uniqueness of it all.
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Heaven doesn't "look like" anything, since no one there has eyes.
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Who are you calling 'pathetic and insignificant' ? Really. How can you compare a dying star to a human ? Apples with apples etc
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Looks like what people describe as near death experience. Makes you wonder about what it is they're seeing...
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All very well, but can anyone see the figure of Michael Jackson in the upper beam of light?!
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..........Amazing and beautiful. It really hammers home how pathetic and insignificant humans are! Mshx......... Err why? We're really rather wonderful in our own way! Don't you think that's a rather negative view of ones own species? Just because were a very small part of it all, we're still part of it - so celebrate!
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We are all going to die anyway.
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If nuclear fuel is " massive " and it runs out then all that is left from this dying particle physics factory must be the Higgs boson ( if it exists ) and or Dark Matter; which does. Astrophysical research is always reverse engineering. The one way arrow of time prevents anyone from predicting the future. Try as we might we cannot see or experience anything happening in the universe beyond " now " or " then ". How and why may be two sides of the same coin but the answers don't necessarily explain " what " the coin is in the first place.The only way to do that would be to compare like with like. Alternative universes anyone ?........heaven hell and everything in between etc etc etc..........
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Beautiful pictures, however is it just me or does it look like in the first picture someone may have taken a picture from directly underneath a goldfish in the water?
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