Hubble catches the last lights of a dying star in spectacular detail

A new Hubble Space Telescope image peels back layers of dust around the Egg Nebula, an astronomical tragedy of a star nearing death, foreshadowing the final act for our own sun.

The Egg Nebula lies about 1,000 light-years away in space in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. At its center sits a dying star, completely hidden in a thick cocoon of dust. Only narrow beams of light escape through gaps near the poles, casting long shadows and bright streaks that give the nebula its striking, symmetrical look.

The scene stands out because it is the youngest and closest known example of a pre-planetary nebula. This short-lived phase comes just before a star turns into a full planetary nebula, the death throes of a sun-like star. Because this precursor lasts only a few thousand years, astronomers rarely get a nearby example they can examine in detail.

"At this early phase, the nebula shines by reflecting light from its central star, which escapes through a polar 'eye' in the surrounding dust," NASA said. "This light emerges from a dusty disk expelled from the star's surface just a few hundred years ago."

Hubble keeps returning to the Egg Nebula because it changes in ways astronomers can actually track over years and decades. By comparing images taken at different times, scientists can see dust shift, jets stretch, and structures subtly change shapes, helping them test ideas about how stars shed material as they die.

Unlike giant stars that die in one violent explosion, a medium star like the sun is expected to just keep on burning until it exhausts its nuclear fuel. This event forms a so-called "planetary nebula," a confusing misnomer because it's not about planets. 

As a sun-like star nears the end, it puffs out into a red giant — up to 1,000 times its original size — eventually engulfing the space around it, including any nearby worlds. As the star eventually releases its outer layers, it withers to its core in what's known as a white dwarf star. At that point, it'll be about the size of Earth.

The Egg Nebula, aka CRL 2688, is not there yet. Unlike many planetary nebulas, it does not glow because its gas has heated up and become energized. Instead, it acts sort of like a cosmic mirror. 

Hubble's sharp vision shows what that light reveals. Fast streams of material race away from the star along its poles, carving long lobes through a slower-moving, older shell of shed dust. That outer shell appears as a series of evenly spaced ripples expanding outward in space. The neatness of these rings rules out a single supernova.

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"The arcs, lobes, and central dust cloud likely stem from a coordinated series of poorly understood sputtering events in the carbon-enriched core of the dying star," NASA said. 

The shapes also hint that the star may not be alone. One or more unseen companion stars could orbit within the dusty disk, using gravity to steer the flow of gas and dust into the patterns Hubble sees today.

Early Hubble images of the Egg Nebula mapped its basic shape. Later observations in different wavelengths probed deeper into the dust and revealed expanding arcs and jets. The latest image combines older and newer data to deliver the clearest view yet.