The Hourglass Nebula
The beauty of a dying star. Below is an image of the Hourglass Nebula acquired by the Hubble Telescope back in 1995 after the outer layers of the star were ejected – consisting of gaseous nitrogen (red), hydrogen (green) and oxygen (blue) – and the core became a decaying white dwarf. The nebula is part of the constellation Musca, which is about 8,000 light-years from Earth.
