Fact Sheet
Last Hurrah
A colorful bubble of gas and dust surrounds the "corpse" of a star in the nebula known as NGC 2440. The star shed these bubbles at different times over the last few tens of thousands of years, forming the bowtie-shaped nebula. The star's ultrahot core, known as a white dwarf, is at the center of the nebula. Energy from the white dwarf lights up the nebula around it. Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image on February 7. [NASA/ESA/K. Noll (STScI)]
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