A Cosmic Flower in Bloom 🌸 Captured in all of its glory by our Spitzer Space Telescope, this delicate cosmic "flower" can be found in the Ring Nebula. The outer shell of this planetary nebula is formed from material ejected from a dying star. Despite the star decaying, it releases a beautiful display that looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom. The “ring” in the center of the image is a thick cylinder of glowing gas and dust around the doomed star. As the star begins to run out of fuel, its core becomes smaller and hotter, boiling off its outer layers. Spitzer's infrared array camera detected this material expelled from the withering star. Previous images of the Ring Nebula taken by visible-light telescopes usually showed just the inner glowing loop of gas around the star. The outer regions resembling petals are especially prominent in this image because Spitzer saw infrared light from hydrogen molecules that absorbed ultraviolet radiation from the ...