Zoom into the Bug Nebula in 4K | AyE uniVERSE

We’re bugging out over this nebula! 🐜 The Ant Nebula, formally called Menzel 3 (Mz 3), is a planetary nebula and offers a preview into what our Sun’s fate may one day look like. Mushroom-like clouds of gas from the dying star at the center of this image form what resemble the head and thorax of an ant. The patterns of gas are symmetrical but not spherical, surprising scientists who had theorized that spherical stars would produce spherical ejections as they died. MZ 3’s patterns are unlike thos

🐱 Cat’s Eye Nebula! This extraordinary cosmic object is called a planetary nebula, which form when a Sun-like star ejects its outer gaseous layers, creating a bright nebula with amazing shapes. Observations of the Cat’s Eye Nebula suggest that it was created by a star that cast off its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. Each resulting dust shell contains as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined…which is still only one percent of our Sun's mass! This nebul