Now you’re thinking with portals!⁣ ⁣ This composite picture of the Helix Nebula combines images from NASAHubble and the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory to give us a dizzying view down a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases. Because this radiant tube is pointed nearly directly at Earth, it looks more like a circle or bubble than a cylinder.⁣ ⁣ Look closely around the circle, and you may notice thread-like structures pointing toward the center. These filaments formed when a hot "stellar wind" of gas plowed into colder shells of dust and gas ejected previously by the small, super-hot white dwarf star at the center of this nebula.⁣ ⁣ Like Hubble, you too can study the Helix Nebula. It can be seen with binoculars as a ghostly, greenish cloud in the constellation Aquarius. If you have a larger amateur telescope, you’ll be able to see the ring-shaped nebula, but only the largest ground-based telescopes will show the bicycle-spoke-li...