Behold the Coldest Place in the Universe

At a single degree Kelvin, or 458 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest place in the universe. Astronomers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory just released the above image of the nebula, which was made through a combination of images taken with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile and the Hubble Telescope.

The nebula is 5,000 light years away in the constellation Centaurus. It’s actually a star that is reaching its end-of-life phase, and is classified as a pre-planetary nebula. It's currently jettisoning material, and when it sheds its outer layers, it will become an ultraviolet radiation-producing white dwarf.

Right now, that outflow of gas is expanding rapidly and cooling the star via the same thermodynamic principle powering your refrigerator. As a result, the nebula is even cooler than the general cosmic background radiation, which is a comparatively balmy 2.8 degrees Kelvin, just 455 degrees below Fahrenheit.

It sort of looks like the Susan G. Komen foundation found its official interstellar object, but the visible ribbon shape is sort deceptive, as the middle of the spherical cloud is obscured by millimeter-sized dust particles. If you'd like to see another angle (and who wouldn't?) Hubble photographed the nebula back in 2005 and colorized it according to the angle of the polarized light. It's a stunner.