Cosmic Miracle

Stars: Stunning at birth,

awesomely glowing in life,

beautiful in death.

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Author's note: I was mesmerized by this image and it made me think about life and death on a cosmic scale. To me, it looked like an open pecan shell with the pink core.

Here's the NASA explanation of what is captured in this image:

What looks like a single large, bright star but is two shines with bright purple diffraction spikes at the center of a large, diffuse cylinder of gas and dust that is tipped to the right. At the center is a bright pink clumpy cloud that takes up about 25% of the view. The pink region has some holes. Beyond that are two large rings tipped at a 60-degree angle that mark the ends of the cylinder. They appear joined at top left and bottom right. The edges form shallow V-shapes that go inward. The rings appear orange at top left and bottom right, and are blue at bottom and center right. There is diffuse orange material around the body. The black background of space is speckled with tiny stars and galaxies mostly in blues and yellows. A bigger blue star with spikes is just below and to the left of the central stars, but it is slightly smaller. Areas Webb did not observe appear black along the top edges, a thin vertical near the nebula at top left, and at the bottom left and right corners.