"This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our Sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is the white dot in the center. Our Sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years."
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/09?msource=01607&tr=y&auid=2364307
(((Nice shot, huh? However: if you happen to be, say, a museum curator around this
Sun-like star, trying to curate five billion years worth of cultural achievement on your
Earth-like planet, it must be a major-league, serious drag to have your Sun explode and spew its outer flaming layers in your direction, consuming everything in its path in a colossal boiling blast of last-gasp fusion. A little extra carbon dioxide, some methane in your atmosphere, man, you'd LOVE a problem like that.)))
