Credit: Robert Rubin and Christopher Ortiz (NASA/ESA Ames Research Center), Patrick Harrington and Nancy Jo Lame (University of Maryland), Reginald Dufour (Rice University), and NASA/ESA

The remarkable features of this nebula are the numerous holes in the inner shells with jets of material streaming from them. These jets produce column-shaped features that are mirrored in the opposite direction. The multiple shells of material ejected by the dying star give this planetary nebula its odd form. In the 'full nebula' image, the brighter central region looks like a 'nautilus shell'; the fainter outer structure (colored red) a 'tortoise.' The dying star is the white dot in the center. Both pictures are composite images based on observations taken Aug. 6, 1997 with the telescope s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9836d/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License