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.
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 thedying star every few hundred years.
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