WASHINGTON, June 7, 2026 — infopulsetoday.com —The dying star at the center of PMR 1 has maybe a few thousand years left. When it goes, it will either blow itself apart in a supernova or quietly fade into a white dwarf. Either way, the nebula it leaves behind — already one of the strangest objects in the sky — just got a whole lot clearer.
NASA released new images from the James Webb Space Telescope on June 7. They show the planetary nebula nicknamed the Cranium in near- and mid-infrared light.
The pictures are the sharpest ever taken of this object.
First spotted by the Spitzer telescope in 2013, the Cranium now reveals details that were simply invisible before. The nebula looks like a human brain inside a transparent skull.
A dark lane runs vertically through its center, splitting it into two lobes. Those lobes look like the hemispheres of a brain. That shape is not an accident.
Scientists believe twin polar jets blasting from the central star carved it that way.
The process is not fully understood. The new images are expected to help.
Planetary nebulas form when a dying star runs out of fuel in its core.
The star sheds an expanding shell of ionized gas and dust. The Cranium is a striking example of that process.
The star at its center is several times more massive than the Sun.
It is in its final stage of life. For astronomers, this is a rare chance to watch the end up close. The Webb telescope launched in December 2021.
It orbits the Sun a million miles from Earth. Its mirrors are 21.3 feet across, seven times larger than Hubble’s.
That size lets it see things no telescope before it could.
The Cranium images are proof. Features that Spitzer could only hint at are now sharp and clear.
The infrared light cuts through dust that blocks visible light. It lets scientists see the structure of the gas and dust shells in detail. This matters because planetary nebulas are not just pretty pictures.
They are how stars like the Sun — and bigger ones — end their lives.
The material they throw off seeds the galaxy with elements like carbon and nitrogen. Those elements go into new stars and planets.
Life depends on them.
Understanding how nebulas form and evolve is understanding where the stuff of the universe comes from. The Cranium is a particularly good test case.
Its shape is unusual.
The twin jets that carved it are not well understood. How they interact with the surrounding gas and dust is a puzzle. The new images will let scientists model that process more accurately.
They might figure out what conditions create a brain-like shape versus a ring or a butterfly. The Webb telescope is still early in its mission.
It has years of observations ahead.
The Cranium images are one of many releases. But they stand out.
They show what the telescope can do when it points at something familiar and makes it new. The Spitzer saw a fuzzy blob. Webb sees a brain.
That is the difference advanced technology makes.
For the star at the center, the clock is ticking. A few thousand years is nothing in cosmic terms.
When it dies, the nebula will change.
The jets will stop. The gas will drift and fade.
The Cranium will become something else.
For now, it is frozen in time. The new images catch it at a moment that will not last. That is what makes them valuable.
That is why scientists will study them for years.
