This Hubble image was taken in November 2008 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The colors in the image represent a range of emissions coming from the clouds of the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen
It’s an amazing gorgeous image. Hubble has captured a unique planetary nebula nested inside an open star cluster. Both the cluster (NGC 2818A) and the nebula (NGC 2818) reside over 10,000 light-years away, in the southern constellation Pyxis also called the Compass. This spectacular structure contains the outer layers of a sun-like star that were sent off into interstellar space during the star's final stages of life. These glowing gaseous shrouds were shed by the star after it ran out of fuel to sustain the nuclear reactions in its core. Our own sun will undergo a similar process, but not for another 5 billion years.
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