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For the Hubble Space Telescopes 34th anniversary, we're taking a close up look at the colorful demise of a star called the Little Dumbbell Nebula, known also as Messier 76

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This photogenic object has long been studied by both professional and amateur astronomers. Located about 3400 light years away from Earth in measuring about 1.2 light years, or 7 trillion miles across, M 76 is categorized as a planetary nebula, an expanding shell of glowing gases expelled by a dying star.

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In this stellar scene, two lobes of hot gas are seen escaping out of the top and bottom of the bright belt region. They are being propelled by the hurricane like outflow of material from the dying star, tearing across space at 2,000,000mph. In the middle of the chaos, an intensely hot, shrinking cinder of a burned out star called a white dwarf is inflating the nebula like a balloon blazing at a surface temperature of 250,000°F.

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Every detail within this image originates from this seemingly minuscule, yet undeniably powerful entity.

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The winds emanating from the central star exert force on the surrounding material, causing it to expand outward. This outward push plows into slower moving gas that was ejected earlier. This forms ribbons of material resembling comets, each with a tail pointing away from the central star. This reveals the directional flow of the stellar winds like a weather vane. The ultraviolet light emitted by the hot core causes the ejected gas to glow, leading to the nebula's stunning appearance.

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The colors are from different glowing elements. The red shows nitrogen, the blue oxygen, and the green is hydrogen.

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Studying planetary nebula like M 76 provides valuable insight into how the universe evolved from its original hydrogen and helium composition after the Big Bang to the formation of materials necessary for complex structures like planets, as well as the ultimate fate of stars like our own sun dying. Low mass stars such as this one also play a crucial role in seeding the universe with the carbon that makes complex chemistry like life, possible.