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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted this cosmic necklace sported by the constellation Sagitta (the arrow), 15,000 light-years away.
Nicknamed the Necklace Nebula, this planetary nebula is called PN G054.2-03.4, and was created by two aging stars orbiting each other in close proximity.
It has a bright ring made up of hydrogen (blue), oxygen (green), and nitrogen (red), and is 12 trillion miles across. Luminous white knots of gas glimmer in the nebula like diamonds.
One of the stars engulfed its companion around 10,000 years ago, leading the smaller star to orbit inside the larger one, which rotated so rapidly that most of its gaseous shell ballooned into space.
The dense ring formed due to centrifugal force when much of the gas gathered around the star’s equator.
This binary pair appears to be a single star at the center of the nebula, as the stars are only a few million miles apart, making a complete orbit of each other in just over one day.
