Hubble Telescope Captures the Beauty of the Egg Nebula

Liputan6.com, Jakarta - The NASA/ESA Hubble Telescope captured the clearest new image of the Egg Nebula, provides significant new insights into the evolution of dying stars.

The image, released on February 10, 2026, shows the dramatic interplay of light and shadow formed by newly ejected stardust.

This latest observation was made using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), combining infrared data with images taken in 2012.

Hubble's sharpness reveals intricate details that hint at the formation of this mysterious structure, located about 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan).

The Egg Nebula, also known as CRL 2688, is a bipolar protoplanetary nebula, the first, youngest, and closest ever discovered.

It is called by NASA as "the first, youngest, and closest pre-planetary nebula ever discovered."

🆕 Hubble has captured the light show around a dying star ☠️⭐This is the Egg Nebula 🥚 the first, youngest, and closest pre-planetary nebula ever discovered. This pre-planetary stage lasts only a few thousand years, making the Egg Nebula a valuable target for astronomers… pic.twitter.com/r6XyJdF2cr

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) February 10, 2026

This new image, released on February 10, 2026, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, reveals a dramatic interplay of light and shadow in the Egg Nebula.

This observation was taken using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and includes infrared data, which is crucial for penetrating the dense dust.

One unique feature is the fast-moving outflow of hot molecular hydrogen, which glows in infrared light and is visible as an orange highlight in the image.

The Egg Nebula offers a rare opportunity to test theories of late-stage stellar evolution.

The Egg Nebula is a fascinating cosmic object, offering a unique glimpse into one of the most dynamic phases in a star's life.

The nebula glows by reflecting light from its central star, which escapes through a polar “eye” in the surrounding dust.

Two beams of light from the dying star illuminate the fast-moving polar lobe, which penetrates a series of slower, older concentric arcs.

This symmetrical pattern captured by Hubble is too regular to be the result of a cataclysmic explosion like a supernova, suggesting a more gradual and complex process.

Instead, the arcs, lobes, and central dust cloud likely originate from a series of poorly understood “sputtering” events in the star's carbon-enriched core.

A fast-moving outflow of hot molecular hydrogen also emerges from within the dust cloud, visible at the base of the beam.

This outflow glows with infrared light, appearing as an orange highlight in the new image.

Stellar evolution is a long and fascinating cosmic life cycle, in which stars like our Sun shed their outer layers as they exhaust their hydrogen and helium fuel.

The exposed core becomes so hot that it ionizes the surrounding gas, creating the glowing shell seen in planetary nebulae like the Helix, Stingray, and Butterfly nebulae.

The compact Egg Nebula is still in a brief transitional phase known as the pre-planetary stage.

Eventually, the star will shed its outer layers completely, shrinking into a core known as a white dwarf.

Hubble has observed the Egg Nebula before, with the first visible-light image from WFPC2 (Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2) in 1997, complemented by near-infrared NICMOS (Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer) images.