"Eye" spiral nebula is blue

Helix Nebula (snail) is often called the "Eye of God" or "Eye of Sauron", and do not reject that this place looks like a cosmic eye, looks straight at us. On the new image, which combined the image transmitted from the telescope "Spitzer" and GALEX, the eye appears to us in a blue shade that complements the palette of gold, green and turquoise of the nebula, obtained previously by other observatories.

In fact, the eye is a dying star. Powerful ultraviolet radiation, which causes the light spiral nebula, comes from its hot stellar core - a white dwarf is so tiny on the scale of the nebula, which is the image it is like a small point.

Helix Nebula, or NGC 7293, lies at a distance of 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Planetary nebulae are the remnants of Sun-like stars, and so one day - in about five billion years - when viewed from a distance our sun will look that way. And the Earth by then fry likes toast.

When a star ends evolving hydrogen, it begins to use helium for thermonuclear fusion reactions, creating a core of heavier elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. But in the end ends and helium, and the star dies, leaving a tiny, red-hot, white core, called a white dwarf. A powerful UV radiation causes the outer shells of the star dumped hot and emits radiation in the infrared range, presented in a picture in a reddish hue.