Ant Nebula
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This Hubble photo of the dying star Menzel 3, popularly known as the “Ant Nebula” because of its shape, gives us a dramatic new insight into how our own sun is likely to expire: not with a whimper, but a bang.
The star at the center of the Ant Nebula has become vast in size and is ejecting gas into space in weird but symmetrical patterns, forming the body of the “ant”. These gases travel at speeds of 1000Km per second, and are millions of times more dense than the gases that comprise our own sun’s solar winds.
There are many other sunlike stars that have been observed in their death dance, but none is quite like the Ant Nebula.
