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The Hubble Space Telescope spotted a star-like "jellyfish" located in the constellation Orion.
The space telescope photographed the star, known as NGC 2022, a so-called "red giant", showing the ancient star developing to a size greater than that of our sun.
"When stars like the sun are growing, they expand and turn red," Hubble officials wrote in a statement. These so-called red giants then begin to lose their outer layers of material in space.More than half of the mass of such a star can thus be lost, thus forming a surrounding gas hull. At the same time, the star's core contracts and gets hotter, emitting ultraviolet light that shines the expelled gases. "
Although it looks more like an entity seen under a microscope than a telescope, this rounded object, named NGC 2022, is certainly not an alga or a tiny blobby jellyfish. Instead, it is a vast globe of gas in space, rejected by an aging star. (Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA, R. Wade)
NASA RECEIVES GALACTIC MYSTERIOUS SPACE & # 39; JELLYFISH & # 39;
"The star is visible in the orb [center], shining through the gases he once held for most of his stellar life, "they added.
The center of NGC 2022 is in the center of the image and shines bright yellow-orange. The gas layers give off the pink and violet wavelengths detected by the Hubble.
The star is known as a planetary nebula (a name given to this type of celestial bodies by astronomers in the 17th and 18th centuries), although it has nothing to do with the planets. "The name comes from the rounded and planetary appearance of these objects in the first telescopes," the statement added.
The image was released on August 12.
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