Posts Tagged ‘butterfly nebula’
Red Spiders
Credit: Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University) et al., HST, ESA, NASA
What a tangled web. The Red Spider Nebula, caught in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, is a two-lobed planetary nebula. Also called butterfly nebulas, these planetary nebula are what remains when a normal, Sun-like star reaches the end of its life. What is left becomes a white dwarf. The Red Spider Nebula, also called NGC 6537, houses one of the hottest white dwarfs astronomers have seen. The nebula is created when gas and dust blown out from the star, called a solar wind, collide with the walls of the nebula. The walls of the nebula aren’t moving as fast. When the two collide, the atoms in the cloud begin to glow. As for the strange shape, stars at the final stage of their life throw off gas and star material in waves and in all different directions.
Starry Spiders
Credit: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Vincent Icke (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Garrelt Mellema (Stockholm University), and NASA
Have you walked in the garden and seen a long legged garden spider? I see a pinkish one here.
Starry butterflies
Credit: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Vincent Icke (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Garrelt Mellema (Stockholm University), and NASA
Glowing in the night, this starry butterfly shows us pinwheel shapes, goblets and bright colors. The Hubble Space Telescope took this image in 1997. The picture of M2-9 gives us another idea of how our Sun might die in 5 billion years. The central star of this planetary nebula blows out stuff like the exhaust of a jet engine. Astronomers also call M2-9 the “Twin Jet Nebula.”
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The ancient peoples saw pictures in the sky. From those patterns in the heavens, ancient storytellers created legends about heroes, maidens, dragons, bears, centaurs, dogs and mythical creatures…Read More
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By The Riviera Times
By CritterKeeper
By Sarah Q. Brett