NASA Hubble Image: The Giraffe - U Camelopardalis

A Hubble Space Telescope image shows U Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, a star nearing the end of its life located in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe), near the North Celestial Pole.

As it begins to run low on fuel, it is becoming unstable.

Every few thousand years, it coughs out a nearly spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core begins to fuse.

The gas ejected in the star's latest eruption is clearly visible in this picture as a faint bubble of gas surrounding the star.

The shell of gas, which is both much larger and much fainter than its parent star, is visible in intricate detail in Hubble's portrait.

While phenomena that occur at the ends of stars' lives are often quite irregular and unstable, the shell of gas expelled from U Cam is almost perfectly spherical.