Celestial Beauty

This NASA image shows the planetary nebula NGC 6543, as seen during the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. A planetary nebula is a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now, when it expands to become a red giant and then sheds most of its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core that contracts to form a dense white dwarf star.