You think Christmas with your family in Minnesota is cold. At negative 458 degrees Fahrenheit, the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest place in the universe, according to a news release by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

“This ultra-cold object is extremely intriguing and we’re learning much more about its true nature with ALMA,” Raghvendra Sahai, a researcher and principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal,said. “What seemed like a double lobe, or ‘boomerang’ shape, from Earth-based optical telescopes, is actually a much broader structure that is expanding rapidly into space.”

At 5,000 light-years away from us in the Centaurus constellation, the Boomerang Nebula is believed to be a pretty young nebula and also colder than the afterglow of the Big Bang (the “background temperature” of the universe).

Fun fact: because the star is too cold to emit its own light, the only way we can see it is by the light reflected from other stars by grains of dust. This effect gives the Boomberang Nebula a ghost-like appearance.

“Many planetary nebulae have this same double-lobe appearance, which is the result of streams of high-speed gas being jettisoned from the star. The jets then excavate holes in a surrounding cloud of gas that was ejected by the star even earlier in its lifetime as a red giant,” Sahi said.

Astronomers were able to take the ghost image of the Boomerang Nebula using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Telescope. Scientists are working to learn more about the nebula’s properties, including some insight into its peculiar shape and appearance.

What scientists do know is the Boomerang is also a pre-planetary nebula; it is in the stage just after nebula stage in a star’s life. They also know that this cold star’s gases expand rapidly, which cools the star and causes a refrigerator effect.

The research team believe the nebula is starting to warm, which may be due to what is called the photoelectric effect—when solid material absorbs light and then re-emits electrons.

The team also found dust particles surrounding the star. The dust clouds might be what “shades” certain areas of the cloud when it is in visible light, which could be what gives the Boomerang Nebula its hourglass shape.

“This is important for the understanding of how stars die and become planetary nebulae,” Sahai said. “Using ALMA, we were quite literally and figuratively able to shed new light on the death throes of a Sun-like star.”