CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A telescope in Chile has captured a stunning new picture of a grand and graceful cosmic butterfly.
The National Science Foundation’s NoirLab released the picture Wednesday.
Snapped last month by the Gemini South telescope, the aptly named Butterfly Nebula is 2,500 to 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. A single light-year is 6 trillion miles.
At the heart of this bipolar nebula is a white dwarf star that cast aside its outer layers of gas long ago. The discarded gas forms the butterflylike wings billowing from the aging star, whose heat causes the gas to glow.
Schoolchildren in Chile chose this astronomical target to celebrate 25 years of operation by the International Gemini Observatory.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LATEST POSTS
- 1
Find Unexpected, yet invaluable treasure Excursion Rentals - 2Figure out How to Reveal Stowed away Open Record Rewards
- 3Figure out How to Forestall Tooth Staining
- 4‘Dying of thirst’: Inside Gaza’s al-Mawasi water crisis
- 5I’m a dad to an autistic child. Here’s how you can make the holidays easier for all of us.
- Fossils unearthed in Morocco are first from little-understood period of human evolution
- Pain at the pump for Hampton Roads residents
- Wegmans recalls mixed nuts over salmonella contamination fears
- The most effective method to Pick the Right Volvo XC40 Trim for Your Way of life
- False fuel prices in fabricated graphics circulate in Malaysia as Iran war continues
- Looking for under-the-radar adventures? Try Norway's Vesterålen
- NASA's make-or-break moon shot
- Was This Driver Simply Having Some good times Or Behaving Like An Ass?
- Which Switch Game Do You Suggest? Share Your Decision
