CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A telescope in Chile has captured a surprising new image of a grand and swish cosmic butterfly.
The Nationwide Science Basis’s NoirLab launched the image on Wednesday.
Snapped final month by the Gemini South telescope, the aptly named Butterfly Nebula is 2,500 to three,800 light-years away within the constellation Scorpius.
A single light-year is 6 trillion miles.
On the coronary heart of this bipolar nebula is a white dwarf star that solid apart its outer layers of gasoline way back.
The discarded gasoline kinds the butterfly-like wings billowing from the getting old star, whose warmth causes the gasoline to glow.
Schoolchildren in Chile selected this astronomical goal to have fun 25 years of operation by the Worldwide Gemini Observatory.
The Related Press Health and Science Division receives assist from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Training and the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.
