Blue Bubble Nebula

Give the world champion bubble-blower all the gum ever made and they still couldn't match the mass of this seemingly inflatable space object—seen here as snapped by the Hubble Telescope. The 'lungs' that blew up the Bubble Nebula belong to the flared point of light in the sphere's upper left—a star called BD+602522, whose stellar winds force gas and dust outward in all directions, ballooning to a diameter of 6 light years or more. We hate to burst your bubble, but even stars breathe their last eventually: Astronomers think BD+602522 will go supernova in 10 to 20 million years, a cosmic cataclysm sure to make this nebula pop.