As M2-9 slowly dies over the course of 1000 years, it castes off gasses while transforming from an Ordinary Star to a Butterfly Planetary Nebula to a White Dwarf Star. This planetary nebula used to be an ordinary star, alike to our sun. As it makes it's transition to a white dwarf it must first expel it's outer gaseous envelope (the layer of atmosphere or gasses surrounding an object). M2-9 became a planetary nebula (a ring-shaped nebula formed by an expanding shell of gas around an aging star) during the process of expelling it's gasses. It is currently 2100 light years away and it's wings (the outer edges of the mass) puzzle astronomers as they work to determine how this star went through it's transition.
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