A telescope in Chile captured a stunning image of a grand and graceful “cosmic butterfly”.
The photo was published on Wednesday by NoirLab, the laboratory of the US National Science Foundation, writes The New York Post.
Captured last month by the Gemini South telescope, the Butterfly Nebula—as it’s suggestively named—lies about 2,500 to 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles.
At the center of this bipolar nebula is a white dwarf star that has long ago shed its outer layers of gas into space.
The distant gas forms butterfly-like wings that extend from the aging star, and its heat causes the gas to glow.
Students in Chile chose this astronomical target to mark 25 years of operation of the Gemini International Observatory.
