Celestial 'Eye' Stares Back at Earth in Dazzling Hubble Telescope Photo

By Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Contributor | August 31, 2018 07:16am ET

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https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3OS8wNjMvb3JpZ2luYWwvbmdjLTM5MTguanBn

Planetary nebula NGC 3918 shines bright like a cosmic eye. It's found in the southern sky, within the constellation Centaurus.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Many people enjoy gazing at the night sky, and once in a while, something up there appears to look right back at us.

Planetary nebula NGC 3918 shines brightly in a dazzling new photo that NASA described in a statement Aug. 24. The space agency calls the nebula a "celestial eye," and a little creativity makes it easy to see why: The rounded and expanded clouds of dust and gas look like a fluorescent iris in the heavens, the white dwarf shining brightly in the center could pass as a glimmering pupil, and the whisker-like edges resemble cosmic eyelashes.

Stars like the sun will likely end up as planetary nebulas when they die. And as spectacular as these formations are, they're gone in a cosmic blink of an eye. Planetary nebulas like NGC 3918 exist for just a few tens of thousands of years, according to NASA. [Spectacular Nebula Photos from Deep Space]

This nebula is found in the southern sky about 4,900 light-years from Earth, within the constellation Centaurus (the centaur), and its irregular shapes are still not fully explained.

More:
https://www.space.com/41682-cosmic-eye-hubble-ngc-3918-photo.html