A Dying Star Metamorphoses Into a Butterfly

When a star dies, it can be lovely. When a star dies with another nearby, it can be amazing. The image above shows Hubble 12 (also called HB 12 for short), what astronomers call a planetary nebula, the gas and dust thrown off by a star as it ends its life. When the star runs out of fuel in its core needed to generate the energy it uses to sustain itself, the outer layers of the star can be thrown off in a series of winds, like a solar wind on steroids. This can form odd and intriguing shapes, in...