In today's image, we see the Butterfly Nebula as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is an example of a planetary nebula which is the end state of a star much like our own Sun. The core will collapse down to a compact white dwarf star while the outer layers are expelled out into space giving the image that we see here.

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This Podcast is an authorized New Media Mirror Site for APOD. You can access the image and website directly at: Astronomy Picture of the Day. You can use the archive link below the image to select the photo corresponding to the date of this podcast.

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