Egg Nebula

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals the clearest view yet of the Egg Nebula — a pre-planetary nebula of gas and dust created by a dying, Sun-like star. These newest observations, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, include infrared data. Powerful beams of starlight blast out of the inner cloud, illuminating the cosmic structure. Fast-moving outflows of hot molecular hydrogen also emerge from within the dust cloud, visible at the base of the searchlight beams. These outflows glow with infrared light, which appears as orange highlights. The central dust cloud is surrounded by concentric rings of thin, faint arcs of gas. These were created by successive outbursts from the central star, which ejected material from its outer surface every few hundred years. The beams of starlight are reflected by these layers of gas, creating the appearance of ripples. The reflected starlight reveals important details about the central star, which is impossible to view directly in its dusty shell.

Image Description: In the image center, an opaque oval cloud of gray gas aligned from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock hides a star. Two strong beams of light from the star emerge from large holes in both sides of the cloud, forming narrow cones extending toward 10 o’clock and 4 o’clock. The central cloud is surrounded by concentric, wispy shells of gas illuminated by the star’s light. The shells reflect extra light where they’re hit by the twin beams. A crowd of smaller stars with cross-shaped spikes over them surrounds the nebula on a black background.