Caverns in light

[Images: An exploding star's "light echo," as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 2002. View larger!].

"In January 2002," NASA reported half a decade ago, "a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun." This "mysterious star" produced, in the process, a "light echo" that "uncovered remarkable new features" in that star's astral architecture. "These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star."
In the above sequence of images, then, you are looking at "continuously changing cross-sections of the dust envelope" – a visual effect compared by NASA to "a spelunker taking a flash picture of the walls of an undiscovered cavern," where the "cavern" in question is an exploding sphere of light. A spectacular geology, indeed.
Imagine if the most beautiful thing in the universe only exists for a billionth of a second.
Imagine if no one sees it.