At the center of the image is the dying star. It's surrounded by a white-and-orange wispy "cloud" of gas. Farther away, more gas and dust creates an orange-and-yellow circular "ring" around the center.

C39 (NGC 2392)

This stellar relic was first spied by William Herschel in 1787. The fuzzy outer region is a disk of material embellished with a ring of comet-shaped objects, with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. The inner nebula also contains some fascinating details. Although this bright central region resembles a ball of twine, it is, in reality, a bubble of material being blown into space by the central star's intense "wind" of high-speed material.

Credits: NASA, Andrew Fruchter, and the ERO Team [Sylvia Baggett (STScI), Richard Hook (ST-ECF), Zoltan Levay (STScI)]
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Image CreditNASA, Andrew Fruchter, and the ERO Team [Sylvia Baggett (STScI), Richard Hook (ST-ECF), Zoltan Levay (STScI)]
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