The shape of the Helix Nebula has always been a bit of a mystery to astronomers; some theorized that it’s donut-shaped, or it could even resemble a snake-like coil. But new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope have helped to shed some light on this issue. Researchers tracked the speed of material being expended from the central dying star, and came to the conclusion that it’s actually two gaseous disks which are perpendicular to each other. One disk was expelled 6,600 years ago, and the other was fired off 12,000 years ago.