'Eskimo' Nebula

This glowing remnant of a dying, sun-like star, first sighted in 1787, is nicknamed the "Eskimo" Nebula (NGC 2392) because of its resemblance to a face in a fur parka (when viewed through telescopes on the ground). In this January Hubble image, the "fur parka" is shown to be a disk of material embellished with a ring of puzzling comet-shaped objects with their tails streaming outward from the central star. The "face" is a bubble of debris being blown into space by a high-speed blast from the central star.

Photo by NASA, the European Space Agency Andrew Fruchter and the ERO team (STScI).