The Egg Nebula from the Hubble Telescope
Ever wonder what it would look like to crack open the Sun?
The
Egg Nebula, a dying
Sun-like star, can unscramble this question.
Pictured is a combination of several visible and
infrared images of the nebula
(also known as RAFGL 2688 or
CRL 2688) taken with the
Hubble Space Telescope.
The star has shed its outer layers, and a
bright, hot core
(or "yolk") now illuminates the milky "egg white"
shells
of gas and dust surrounding the center.
The central lobes and rings are structures of
gas and dust recently ejected into space,
with the dust being dense enough to block our view of the
stellar core.
Light beams emanate from that
blocked core,
escaping through holes carved in the
older ejected material by newer, faster
jets expelled from the
star’s poles.
Astronomers are
still trying to figure out what causes the disks, lobes, and jets during this short (only a few thousand years!) phase of the star’s
evolution, making this an egg-cellent image to study!