Glowing like a jewel, the planetary nebula IC 418 gives us a glimpse into the future and the fate of our own sun. This striking image of the nebula, which lies about 2,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Lepus, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
It represents the final stages in the evolution of a star similar to our sun. The bright point in the middle is the remnant of the star in its red giant phase near the end of its life. The surrounding cocoon was produced when the star ejected its outer layers into space to form the nebula which lies about 0.1 light-year away from the stellar surface.
Over thousands of years the ejected material will disperse and the star will cool to a white dwarf, the pattern our own sun will follow in about five billion years.
The picture is a false-colour representation, captured during successive exposures using filters that isolate light from various chemical elements. Red is for ionised nitrogen, green shows hydrogen emissions and blue is given by ionised oxygen.