It lies 3 thousand light years from Earth across inter-stellar space. It is the brief glorious phase in the life of a Sun-like star. The truly cosmic ‘eye’ is over half a Light Year across.
Of course astronomers may well be seeing the destiny of our Sun when they view this image.
Our sun is destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution in about 5 billion years.
A light year is the distance that light travels in one year and is 186,000 miles per second x 3,600 x 24 x 365 miles in a year.
http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/astropix.html