As a star nears the end of its life, it runs out of fuel and collapses under the force of its own gravity. The stellar death leaves behind gas and dust in the form of an explosion that can look to our observatories as if it’s frozen in time, crystallized in amber. Now, a new NASA observatory has offered us an incredible, fresh view of the true dynamic nature of a star’s death throes. The star’s demise, whose light reached Earth in the 17th century, left in its wage a luminous cosmic rose in the dark depths of space.
