Saturn Simulacrum
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November 13, 2011 The last gasp of a dying star produces a spectacular cloud of gas and dust in this Hubble Space Telescope image. When first seen through a telescope more than two centuries ago, its outline resembled that of the planet Saturn, so it was named the Saturn Nebula. (It is also known by the catalog number NGC 7009.) It is about 1,400 light-years away, in Aquarius. As a star like the Sun nears the end of its life, it expels its outer layers into space, forming a colorful shell of gas and dust like this one. The Sun will undergo this fate in several billion years. [Bruce Balick et al./NASA]
