Hubble's latest image shows pulsating star RS Puppis. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA/Hubble/Europe Collaboration)
Everything is cooler in space — including holiday photos.
In the latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope, a dying star pulses light through a swirl of dust and gas to produce a phenomenon known as “light echo,” resulting in a photo that the folks at Hubble say looks like a holiday wreath replete with twinkling lights.
The image is of literal super star RS Puppis, which burns about 6,500 light-years from Earth and which is visible in the southern hemisphere sky. Puppis is 10 times more massive, 200 times larger and 15,000 times more luminous than our sun.
Puppis is in a class of stars known as Cepheid variables, which vary in size as they consume the last of their fuel. Puppis cycles through periods of dimness and brightness every 40 or so days.
To get this image, Hubble observed the star for five weeks in 2010. Astronomers then stitched the snapshots into the below video, which shows the traveling light echo. The echo helps astronomers measure the distance from Earth to the star and comprehend the scale of the cosmos, but it also makes for a pretty viewing experience.
