Hubble Telescope Captures Shimmering, Cosmic Butterfly in New Image

The stunningly complex anatomy of the Twin Jet Nebula is revealed in a new space image delivered by the Hubble Telescope and released by ESA astronomers earlier today. The “M” on its name stands for the surname of American Astronomer Rudolph Minkowski, who discovered it in 1947, while the “PN” refers to planetary nebula.

Deep space is a wonderland of unusual and awe-inspiring sights, but few astronomical curiosities match the exquisite beauty of the Twin Jet Nebula, a dying, binary star that looks like a pair of iridescent butterfly wings. It’s referred to as the Twin Jet Nebula in addition to answering to the marginally much less poetic identify of.

“The glowing and expanding shells of gas clearly visible in this image represent the final stages of life for an old star of low to intermediate mass”, according to the ESA. Ordinary planetary nebulae have one star at their center.

Astronomers have found that the two stars in this nebula each have around the same mass as our own 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. Typically, planetary nebulae have one star at their center, but the Twin Jet Nebula has two.

The unusual shape of the gases, technically two lobes, are caused by the smaller companion star, which has already evolved into a white dwarf, basically the corpse of a dead star. It is believed that a white dwarf orbits its partner star, and thus the ejected gas from the dying star is pulled into two lobes rather than expanding as a uniform sphere. Each lobe contains a massive jet of gas that moves at speeds faster than one million kilometers per hour. It is what is called a bipolar nebula, not because it has a mental condition. This can be a phenomenon that’s one other effect of the binary system on the coronary heart of the nebula.

Meanwhile the Twin Jet Nebula’s wings are still growing and, by measuring their expansion, scientists have calculated that it was created only 1,200 years ago.

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