Dying star glows like crystal ball in stunning new telescope image

In the deep sky, a star is completing a journey billions of years in the making, and for the first time, human instruments have captured that ending with enough clarity to make it feel almost intimate. A telescope has photographed the dying star's outer layers billowing outward in a nearly perfect luminous sphere — what astronomers call a planetary nebula — revealing the strange beauty that emerges when a star can no longer hold itself together. This image is both a scientific milestone and a reminder that the cosmos has always been composing such scenes, long before anyone was watching.