February 25, 2026
The same forces that sculpt nebulae and spin galaxies into existence were at work the day you were born.
The Egg Nebula from the Hubble Telescope
Birthday · February 25, 2026
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APOD published February 25, 2026. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Balick (U. Washington). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
ver wonder what it would look like to crack open the Sun? The Egg Nebula, a dying Sun-like star, can unscramble this question. Pictured is a combination of several visible and infrared images of the nebula (also known as RAFGL 2688 or CRL 2688) taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The star has shed its outer layers, and a bright, hot core (or "yolk") now illuminates the milky "egg white" shells of gas and dust surrounding the center. The central lobes and rings are structures of gas and dust recently ejected into space, with the dust being dense enough to block our view of the stellar core. Light beams emanate from that blocked core, escaping through holes carved in the older ejected material by newer, faster jets expelled from the star’s poles. Astronomers are still trying to figure out what causes the disks, lobes, and jets during this short (only a few thousand years!) phase of the star’s evolution, making this an egg-cellent image to study! APOD Front Page: apod.nasa.gov
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Balick (U. Washington)