Hubble's Spirograph IC418 Nebulae

IC 418 Nebulae from Hubble Space Telescope

     A Hubble Image showing planetary nebula IC 418 glows like multifaceted jewel. It lies about 2000 light years away from our Earth in the constellation Lepus. This planetary nebula indicates the final stage of Star Evolution similar to our Sun. The center of the Star was red before few billion years ago, but now expanded to a diameter of 0.1 light-year. The stellar remnant at the center is hot core from which ultraviolet radiation flows from center to surrounding gas.

Over few thousands year, the nebula will gradually disperse into space, and the star will cool and fade away to become a white dwarf. Our Sun will undergo same procedure after next 5 million years.This image is filtered with several color filters. Red shows emission of Nitrogen, Green shows emission of Hydrogen, Blue shows emission of Ionized Oxygen.