This bizarre ripple in space is none other than the Egg Nebula. It is located about 3000 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
At the center of the image, you’ll see a thick cloud of dust which hides the central star. The star makes an appearance with four distinct beams of light bursting through the shroud of dust. The mechanism that allows these beams to shine through the dust cloud is unknown, though some scientists hypothesis that there are four circular holes in the cloud, possibly caused by a once-binary system, which allows the light to shine.
The iconic ripple around the dying system is a diffuse cloud, which is created by the periodic bursts of material from the star as it sheds its outer layers. Unlike your dog, this shedding of material happens once every few hundred years.
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