The fading Stingray nebula recently photographed by the Hubble telescope. Look

The Stingray Nebula is the youngest known nebula of its kind in the universe. NASA recently released images from the Hubble Space Telescope that show the nebula fading dramatically over a period of two short decades.

According to a recent paper released by NASA, the images are the sharpest snapshots of a fading nebula that have ever been captured.

You can see the side-by-side comparison of the nebula in a recent post from Official NASA Twitter account:

For context, the document accompanying the images explains that it takes millions of years for a star to form and many stars live billions of years before they die. Dying stars emit layers of colored gas that glow against the vastness of space, which is what we call nebulae.

According to Phys.org, the 2016 image shows drastic changes in the gas shells surrounding the nebula’s central star. The blue fluorescent tendrils and gas filaments that can be seen in the center of the 1996 image have all but disappeared in the 2016 image, as have the wavy edges that inspired the nebula’s aquatic-themed name.

The Hubble telescope official Twitter account recently used the contrasting images join a popular meme format that is circulating on the Internet:

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield also posted images of the fading nebula on Twitter along with the caption “Like a candle that goes out by itself”.

Bruce Balick of the University of Washington Seattle, head of new research on the Stingray Nebula, recently said:

“The changes in the nebulae have been seen before, but what we have here are changes in the fundamental structure of the nebula. In most studies, the nebula usually gets bigger. Here it is radically changing its shape and becoming weaker, and it does so on an unprecedented time scale. Also, to our surprise, it is not growing any further. In fact, the once-bright inner elliptical ring appears to shrink as it fades, “via Phys.org.

The team studying the fading nebula can only speculate what new information its future might hold. According to NASA, if the Stingray Nebula continues to vanish at its current rate, it will barely be detectable in the next 20-30 years.