Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Some stellar nebulae are strangely symmetric.
For example, every major blob of gas visible on the upper left of NGC 5307 appears to have a counterpart on the lower right. This picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope was released last week . NGC 5307 is an example of a planetary nebula with a spiral shape. Spiral planetary nebulae are thought to be caused by a bright central white dwarf star expelling a symmetric wobbling jet of rapidly moving gas. In contrast, light takes only about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun .