Two Stars, One Dazzling Death: New View of the Crystal Ball Nebula

A new image of the Crystal Ball Nebula (NGC 1514) taken with Hawaii’s Gemini North telescope shows a dying star in a binary system about 1,500 light-years away; as the primary star sheds its outer layers, its orbiting companion stirs the expanding gas into intricate, cloudlike shapes, with colors tracing hot hydrogen and oxygen. Captured by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph atop Maunakea, the view highlights how planetary nebulae form and evolve on short astronomical timescales, roughly 10,000 years, while astronomers monitor changes over years to learn how mass is lost and shells expand.