Newly expelled gas shells escape in beams as can be seen in the original HST image and in the image shown above . This infrared image is coded in false color to highlight two different types of emission. The red light represents hot hydrogen gas heated by the collisions of expanding shells. The blue light represents light from the central star scattered by the dust in the nebula. It takes light about 3000 years to reach us from the Egg Nebula , which is hundreds of times the size of our Solar System .
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