lies at the heart of this object. Their orbital motions can fully explain the remarkably symmetric structures of the jets in the surrounding gas clouds in this and similar objects. Credit: ESO/H. Boffin The team used ESO's VLT to study the light coming from the central star. They found that Fleming 1 is likely to have not one but two white dwarfs at its centre, circling each other every 1.2 days. Although binary stars have been found at the hearts of planetary nebulae before, systems with two white dwarfs orbiting each other are very rare [4] . " The origin of the beautiful and intricate shapes of Fleming 1 and similar objects has been controversial for many decades, " says Henri Boffin. " Astronomers have suggested a binary star before, but it was always thought that in this case the pair would be well separated, with an orbital period of tens of years or longer. Thanks to our models and observations, which let us examine this unusual system in great detail and peer right into the heart of the nebula, we found the pair to be several thousand times closer. " When a star with a mass up to eight times that of the Sun approaches the end of its life, it blows off its outer shells and begins to lose mass. This allows the hot, inner core of the star to radiate strongly, causing this outward-moving cocoon of gas to glow brightly as a planetary nebula. This artist's impression