A New Wonderful Image of Cosmic Butterfly Taken Through Hubble Telescope

How big is the Twin Jet Nebula? The last image of the planetary nebula was released in 1997.

The Twin Jet Nebula, otherwise known as PN M2-9, was discovered in 1947 by a German-American astronomer by the name of Rudolph Minkowski.

NASA says that the glowing and expanding shells of gas are indicative of the fact that the nebula represents final stages of life for an old star of low to intermediate mass. NASA adds that the star has ejected all its outer layers exposing its core that is illuminating the layers of gases.

Unlike other planetary nebulas, which are created by a single dying star’s ejected and expanding gas, the Twin Jet Nebula is a bipolar nebula, made from a binary star system.

Hubble Space Telescope has clicked an image that shows the Twin Jet Nebula and its knots of expanding gas in a great detail. The Twin Jet Nebula is a bipolar nebula and has two stars and has two stars in it. These two stars found in the pair have the same mass as the sun, ranging from 0.6 to 1.0 solar masses for the smaller star and from 1.0 to 1.4 solar masses for its larger companion.

Bipolar planetary nebulae are formed when the central object is not a single star, but a binary system. The nebula’s wings are still growing and, by measuring their expansion, astronomers have calculated that the nebula was created only 1,200 years ago. But don’t let their delicate facade fool you: These cosmic clouds are enormous jets of star stuff, streaming off into space at speeds in excess of 600,000 miles per hour. This is a phenomenon that is another effect of the binary system at the heart of the nebula.

Astronomers estimate the interaction between the two, as they circle every 100 years or so, is the cause of the “wings of the butterfly”. This motion also allows the white dwarf to strip gas from its companion star, forming a disc of material that extends as far out as 15 times the orbit of Pluto.

Even though this disk is of incredible size, it is much too small to be seen on the image taken by Hubble. In the new image, observations from the telescope’s Space TelescopeImaging Spectrograph have also been included.

A model of this picture was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures picture processing competitors, submitted by contestant Judy Schmidt.