Even in death, there is beauty: Hubble captures new image of Butterfly Nebula

Play

Astronomers have captured a new image of a cosmic butterfly, also known as the Twin Jet Nebula that probably formed only 1,200 years ago. Photo: ESA/Hubble/NASA

on.aol.com

Nebula PN M2-9, better known as the Twin Jet Nebula, is the product of two stars in the final stages of their lives. The bipolar nebula contains one red dwarf, which is between 1.0 and 1.4 times the mass of Earth’s sun, and one white dwarf, which is between 0.6 and 1.0 times the mass of the Earth’s sun. Both stars orbit one another every 100 years and the gravitational pull from one of them is suspected to be pulling released gases from the other into twisting tendrils of iridescent gases across space, reports ABC Science Aug. 31.

NASA / Flickr -- Creative Commons

The image (seen above) was released on the Hubble space telescope website, Aug. 26. Nicknamed “Cosmic Butterfly” because of its shape, the Twin Jet Nebula is also known as “Minowski’s Butterfly” (it was first discovered in 1947 by Rudolph Minkowski, a German-American astronomer), “Wings of a Butterfly Nebula” and simply “Butterfly Nebula.”

The Cosmic Butterfly was first photographed by Hubble in 1997. The newly released photo, is more vibrant and even seems to shimmer. The new photograph shows the complexity of the binary nebula’s two lobes of expanding gas which are estimated to be flying out of the nebula’s center into space at speeds more than 620 million miles per hour.

Located within the constellation Ophiuchus, the nebula is approximately 2,100 light years away from Earth. Astronomers hypothesize that the white dwarf orbits the red dwarf and pulls its gas in two different directions, making for a gorgeous show of colors as the two stars die. The red dwarf has thrown off its outer layers and the star’s core shines through them, making them iridescent.

Though the Cosmic Butterfly is created by a binary star system, it is not certain whether all binary nebulae are caused by them. Other planetary nebulae are created by a single star’s death when its expanding gas ejects into space. Popular single star nebulae photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope include the Crab Nebula and the Orion Complex. Though catalogued as a single star nebula, the Cat’s Eye Nebula may be a binary star nebula. If it is, it will join the Cosmic Butterfly nebula and many others.

*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com