The Boomerang Nebula, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20. $650.00

Five thousand light-years from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus in the southern sky, the Boomerang Nebula was created by a gas moving outward from a red giant star at its core. Its extremely low temperatures are the result of the rapid expansion (nearly 600,000 km/hr) of the gas into space. Just how cold is it there? One degree above what scientists call absolute zero, or minus 458 degrees Farenheit. This is colder than the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang - in fact, it is the coldest place we have measured in the Universe.