The nearby Helix nebula just received the piercing infrared gaze of a giant telescope in Chile, and the resulting image reveals cold gas normally hidden among warmer star-lit material.
Helix’s central star once resembled the Sun, but its outer layers of gas and dust sloughed off. The resulting planetary nebula, located some 700 light-years from Earth, is what telescopes now see.
via Wired Science
January 19, 2012
