Hubble shares amazing image of Nebula formed from dying star 2000 light-years from Earth

Owing to the Nebula November, NASA has shared numerous images of jaw-dropping nebulae that were captured by the Hubble space telescope. However, chances are that this particular image shared by the agency on Thursday was quite simply fascinating. The image shared below features the Spirograph Nebula located about 2,000 light-years from Earth. Glowing like a piece of jewel, the nebula is formally called IC 418 and is in the direction of the constellation Lepus, as per NASA. 

As per the description of the agency, the nebula has a star at its center, which was a red giant a few thousand years ago. This nebula is a result of this particular dying star that shed its outer layers into space and expanded to a diameter of about 0.1 light-year.

If looked closely, one would find that at the center sits the core of the red giant, which is now expelling ultraviolet radiation into the surrounding gas, causing it to glow. The colour red in the image shows emission from ionized nitrogen, green shows emission from hydrogen, and blue shows the emission from ionized oxygen.

NASA says that the expulsion process is expected to last a few thousand years from now, after which the nebula will gradually disperse into space, and the star will cool and fade away, transforming into a white dwarf. Scientists say that our Sun will also have the same fate some five billion years from now.

This image was captured by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and is a false-colour representation based on exposures taken in the year 1999, as per the agency. However, the textures seen in the image are newly revealed and scientists are still uncertain about their origin. This new revelation comes after NASA had shared another image of a reflection nebula incubating a protostar.

Reflection nebula IC 2631

The image seen below has been captured in infrared, featuring the protostar in a reflection nebula IC 2631, which is a part of the star-forming region in the southern constellation Chamaeleon. Protostars are objects that are created when the clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own gravitational force, resulting in a dense hot core that starts gathering more dust and gas.

Interestingly, the leftover gas and dust can either become planets, asteroids, comets, or remain as dust. Click here to read more about this nebula.

Image: Twitter/@NASAHubble