Астронет: Астрономическая картинка дня Туманность Яйцо от телескопа имени Хаббла http://www.astronet.ru/db/msg/1991413/eng

Explanation: Ever wonder what it would look like to crack open the Sun? The Egg Nebula, a dying Sun-like star, can unscramble this question. Pictured is a combination of several visible and infrared images of the nebula (also known as RAFGL 2688 or CRL 2688) taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The star has shed its outer layers, and a bright, hot core (or "yolk") now illuminates the milky "egg white" shells of gas and dust surrounding the center. The central lobes and rings are structures of gas and dust recently ejected into space, with the dust being dense enough to block our view of the stellar core. Light beams emanate from that blocked core, escaping through holes carved in the older ejected material by newer, faster jets expelled from the starБs poles. Astronomers are still trying to figure out what causes the disks, lobes, and jets during this short (only a few thousand years!) phase of the starБs evolution, making this an egg-cellent image to study!

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
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& Michigan Tech. U.