The Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302)

Hubble Space Telescope

Painted

2009

Collection

NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope

A planetary nebula about 3,800 light-years away in Scorpius, where gas thrown off by a dying star at nearly a million kilometres an hour spreads like butterfly wings. The central star, hidden by a band of dust, has a surface temperature of some 250,000 degrees, among the hottest known. It was one of the first images after Hubble's 2009 servicing mission.

Object record (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain

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