Hubble reveals the strange afterlife of a zombie star

Today's Image of the Day from the European Space Agency features the spiral galaxy NGC 1309. This graceful swirl of stars, gas, and dust is located about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.  The new view captures the galaxy in exquisite detail. Its blue arms are full of young stars. The galaxy's glowing white core is surrounded by hundreds of distant galaxies scattered across space. Among the countless lights in the image, only one star belongs to our own Milky Way....