Picture from September 14, 2010
This picture, taken by the Hubble Telescope, depicts a strange phenomenon. Nobody is sure what caused that spiral shape to the left, much less why it seems to glow. The current hypothesis is that it is the proto-planetary disk (basically a mass of swirling gas and dust left over from star formation) of a young binary star system (LL Pegasi). The spiral seems to be expanding, adding another layer approximately every 800 years. Coincidentally, this is roughly the time it would take for the stars to orbit each other. This also shows that although our knowledge of the universe is constantly expanding, there is still much we have yet to learn.
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