Planetary Nebula

This is a Hubble image of a planetary nebula forming. the dying star is ejecting it's outer layers of gas. The star is actually very dim but the image makes it look much brighter and larger. In fact the star is very small but the image makes it look large. The shell of gas is nearly spherical and expanding like a soap bubble. You can see a lot of structure in the ejected gas. Our sun should do something similar in about five billion years.