IC418: The Spirograph

There's so much unknown beauty up there that it never ceases to amaze me. In the dark constellation of Lepus, the hare, at the feet of mighty Orion, you'll find this little bugger. It's obviously a planetary nebula, and one that listens to the denominator IC418, but more commonly known as the Spirograph Nebula. It's nick refers to its complex, almost mathematical structure. 

Experts among you will already have guessed that this nebula's still quite young, hardly 2,600 years old, and in full expansion. Though very small in spite of its relatively close distance of 3,600 light-years, you'll quickly notice some extraordinary details if conditions allow you to push telescope power. Its bright outer shell, gas that was expelled when the star was still in its red giant phase, shines brightly under the heat of the brilliant white dwarf in its heart. The inner shell, on the other hand, appeared much brighter still and seemed to sparkle in the atmospheric turbulences of our Earth. This inner shell is the dying star's atmosphere that was blown away into space after nuclear fusion had become critically unstable. Soon the inner shell will expand so quickly that it'll catch up with the much slower outer envelope, possibly even break through it in order to form ansae, like the ones of the Saturn Nebula. 

So keep your eye on this one because it still has a lot in store for us in the near future... er... in the next couple of thousand years.