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
How Mars 'punches above its weight' to influence Earth's climate - 2Four countries to boycott Eurovision 2026 over Israel’s inclusion
- 3The most effective method to Guarantee Scholastic Honesty in Web-based Degrees
- 4Cannabis reclassification could 'open the floodgates' for research, scientists say
- 5Six Flags Opens the Tallest, Fastest and Longest Roller Coaster in the World
- Are your hormones imbalanced? Doctors explain how to know if you need testing
- Dependable Savvy Locks to Update Your Home Security
- The Best 20 Photography Instagram Records to Follow
- The Fate of Mechanical technology: 5 Headways Forming Tomorrow
- Why doing good also makes us feel good, during the holidays and beyond
- Finding the Universe of Workmanship: Individual Encounters in Imagination
- Shas threatens to oppose 2026 state budget over haredi food-voucher exclusion
- As cases of a rare, deadly infection rise, doctors worry fewer teens will get vaccinated
- NASA says Maven spacecraft that was orbiting Mars has gone silent
