Spectacular cosmic bubble '60 light years wide and 70,000 years old'
At its centre is a star, known as a Wolf-Rayet star which is 20 times the mass of the sun.
When it dies it throws out gas, creating winds which form the bubble.
It will eventually explode into a supernova.
Photographer Dr Don Goldman took this picture remotely from his base in California via an observatory in South Australia.
Dr Goldman said: "The object, known as S308 is a 'cosmic bubble' that represents a last-minute expulsion of gas from a dying star that forms a super wind in the form of a bubble.
"It is not a perfect bubble, because it expands into the interstellar medium that is not uniform, so it can take on unusual shapes and patterns.
"Eventually, this star will explode as a supernova which seeds the cosmos with all the atomic elements that make us."
He added: "I took the data from our observatory in South Austrailia remotely from my computer in California in my pyjamas in the wee hours of the morning. "I can point the telescope to the object of interest, focus the system, make the telescope follow that ojbect as it moves across the sky all night and grab the long, 15-20 min exposures."
Dr Robert J Nemiroff, an astrophysicist at Michigan Technological University and Nasa Goddard added: "Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge.
"Cataloged as Sharpless 308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major
"It corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star itself, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright blue one near the center of the nebula."
He added: "Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution.
"Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution.
"The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years."
