images

Planetary nebula NGC 2440 in Puppis

by

NASA/ESA/Novapix

Reference

a-nep24-40003

Date

2007-02-13

View of the planetary nebula NGC 2440 in Puppis, taken by Hubble Space Telescope on february 6 2007.The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Our Sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years.The white dwarf at the center of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of nearly 200,000 degrees Celsius. NGC 2440 is about 4,000 light-years from Earth.