NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, UCLA
Day 6 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: The Shell of a Dying Star. About 1,500 light-years from Earth, a dying star at the heart of planetary nebula NGC 1514 is performing a spectacular final act. One of a pair of binary stars has been shedding huge amounts of gas and dust for more than 4,000 years, blasting into the surrounding space and lighting it up from within.
See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.
