The Stingray nebula is the youngest known nebula of its kind in the universe. NASA recently published images from the Hubble Space Telescope that show the nebula drastically fading over a period of two short decades.
According to a recent document released by NASA, the images are the clearest snapshots of a fading nebula that have ever been captured.
You can see the nebula’s side by side comparison in a recent post from NASA’s official twitter account:
For context, the document that accompanied the images explains that it takes millions of years for a star to form, and many stars live for billions of years before they die. Dying stars eject layers of colorful gas that glow against the vastness of space, which is what we refer to as nebulas.
According to Phys.org, the 2016 image displays drastic changes in the shells of gas that surrounded the nebula’s central star. The blue fluorescent tendrils and filaments of gas that can be seen in the center of the 1996 image have all but disappeared in the 2016 image, as well as the wavy edges that inspired the nebula’s aquatic-themed name.
The Hubble Telescope’s official Twitter account recently used the contrasting images to participate in a popular meme format that is circulating around the internet:
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield also posted the images of the fading nebula on Twitter along with the caption, “Like a candle blowing itself out.”
Bruce Balick of the University of Washington Seattle, the head of new research on the Stingray nebula, recently stated:
“Changes in nebulae have been seen before, but what we have here are changes in the fundamental structure of the nebula. In most studies, the nebula usually gets bigger. Here, it’s fundamentally changing its shape and getting fainter, and doing so on an unprecedented time scale. Moreover, to our surprise, it’s not growing any larger. Indeed, the once-bright inner elliptical ring seems to be shrinking as it fades,” via Phys.org.
The team that is studying the fading nebula can only speculate what new information its future may hold. According to NASA, if the Stingray nebula continues to fade at its current rate, it will barely be detectable in the next 20 to 30 years.