Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Five hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix, a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula - typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. The emission in this Infrared Space Observatory image of the Helix nebula comes mostly from the expanding shells of molecular hydrogen gas. Dust, normally expected in such nebulae, should also radiate strongly at infrared wavelengths but mysteriously seems to be absent here. The culprit may may well be the Helix's central star, a contracting white dwarf. This small but extremely hot star radiates most of its energy at short Ultraviolet wavelengths and is invisible in this infrared mage. Astronomers suspect that over time, this intense Ultraviolet radiation may have destroyed the dust. The Sun is expected to go through its own Planetary Nebula phase ... in another 5 billion years.