Behold this cosmic blue bubble.
The stunning celestial sight, located in the constellation of Carina some 30,000 light-years from Earth, was recently captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Circling the Wolf-Rayet star known as WR 31a, it's actually an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases.
Scientists think the nebula formed 20,000 years ago when stellar winds interacted with outer layers of hydrogen ejected by the star.
The Hubble Space Telescope says the bubble is currently expanding outwards at around 136,700 miles per hour.
But Wolf-Rayet stars only have a lifecycle of a few hundred thousand years. "The blink of an eye in cosmic terms," said Hubble.
"Despite beginning life with a mass at least 20 times that of the Sun, Wolf–Rayet stars typically lose half their mass in less than 100,000 years," says NASA.
"It will, therefore, eventually end its life as a spectacular supernova, and the stellar material expelled from its explosion will later nourish a new generation of stars and planets."
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