NGC 6302, more romantically known as the Butterfly Nebula, was chosen by Chilean schoolchildren as the latest subject for observation by the Gemini South telescope there. The resulting image, released by the National Science Foundation’s NoirLab, is the most detailed image of it yet. The nebula is 2,500 to 3,800 light years from Earth and made of the matter of the white dwarf star at its center, casting off gases to form winglike shapes light-years across.
Sources report various dates of discovery, but credit typically goes to a 1907 study by American astronomer Edward E. Barnard, though Scottish astronomer James Dunlop may have discovered it in 1826. Its official name is NGC 6302, but it is also referred to as the Butterfly Nebula, Bug Nebula, or Caldwell 69. … In 2009, the Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) identified the central star as a white dwarf — the dense remnant of a Sun-like star — that expelled its outer layers over 2000 years ago and is now around two-thirds the mass of our Sun. It is one of the hottest stars known, with a surface temperature in excess of 250,000 degrees Celsius (450,000 degrees Fahrenheit), implying the star from which it formed must have been very large.
Those wings are hot wings, and you won’t find the source at Trader Joe’s.
Now, as a white dwarf, the star is emitting intense radiation that is heating the ‘wings’ of NGC 6302 to more than 20,000 degrees Celsius (around 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit) and causing the gas to glow. The rich red in the image traces areas of energized hydrogen gas, while the stark blue traces areas of energized oxygen gas. This material, in addition to the other elements scientists have found in NGC 6302, such as nitrogen, sulfur, and iron, will go on to help form the next generation of stars and planets.
Here’s the full-size, zoomable image.
Gemini South is built on a mountain, Cerro Pachón, where the dry air and high altitude offer outstanding views of deep space.
Gemini’s twin telescopes are optimized for observing in the mid-infrared with silver-coated mirrors, an extremely light structure for the secondary, and a light baffle (used when observing in the optical) which can be closed for observing in the infrared. The mirrors are f/1.8, 8.1 m diameter, 20 cm thick meniscus, and weighs 22,200 kg. Each was made from 55 blocks of low expansion (ULE-581) glass fused together at 1700 degrees C and slumped at Corning’s Canton, New York facility. Each mirror blank was then shipped to REOSC Optique in Paris, France, for polishing of its reflecting surface to that of a concave hyperboloid. The measured surface accuracy is 15.6 nm (rms).
Previously: Stunning image of planet-destroying star at the heart of a nebula
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