This distinctively shaped cloud of glowing gas and dust is a small planetary nebula lying 18,000 light years away. It is the youngest known planetary, since its central star only became capable of making the gas glow in the last 20 years. The shell of gas, the size of 130 solar systems, is expanding, propelled by a stream of particles rushing out from the central star (the stellar wind). Most nebulae disperse after a few tens of thousands of years, leaving their parent behind as a white dwarf. In cosmic terms, this stage in a star's evolution is very short as it represents a mere 100,000 years in a star's 10 billion year life. This 1997 image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.