Located 1,227 light-years from Earth is a beautiful planetary nebula called the Dumbbell Nebula. This nebula was actually the first planetary nebula discovered by Charles Messier in 1764. He is famous for publishing an astronomical catalogue that contained 110 nebulae and faint star clusters, which were known as Messier objects. Dumbbell Nebula Credit: Steve Mazlin The first thing you notice is the gorgeous red which represents hydrogen and blue that represents oxygen gasses. This is also a great example of what the future of our Sun may look like after it runs the course of its life. The Dumbbell Nebula resulted from a star that turned into a red giant star. From here it eventually engulfed any planet or moon in its star system and then went supernova. What’s fascinating is although this was discovered in the 18th century and we’ve learned so much about astronomy since...

Located 366 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus is a runaway star called Zeta Ophiuchi (ζ Ophiuchi) or Zeta Oph. It’s a runaway star because it was flung out of a star system as a result of a supernova. This enormous star is about 20 times the mass of our own Sun! Not only that but our Sun’s radius is about 696,340 km and Zeta Oph is 8 times that. This star is huge but is rotating extremely fast. It’s rotating about 400 km/s where it can rotate this gargantuan mass once per Earth day! To give you some perspective our Sun rotates at 1.997 km/s or about once every 27 days. Credit: NASA Zeta Oph is relatively young from the perspective of the universe. It’s about three million years old and is an O-type star giving it that blue hue. Scientists say it’s roughly halfway through its stellar life and in the next few million years go supernova. Of...