Hubble Space Telescope's Time-Lapse Images of Butterfly Nebula Explains How It Got Its Wings and the Sun's Final Fate

The Butterfly Nebula or scientifically known as NGC 6302 is a beautiful cosmic butterfly that extends its wings deep within the constellation Scorpius. It is a double-winged nebula with a vast shell of incandescent gas that is about 4,000 light-years from Earth and is an example of how stars like the Sun would end up if they run out of fuel and die.

(Photo : NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team via Getty Images)
In this image provided by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, a planetary nebula named NGC 6302, also known as, Butterfly Nebula and Bug Nebula, in the Scorpius constellation is pictured July 27, 2009 in Space.

Over 10 Years of Hubble Space Telescope Images of the Butterfly Nebula

According to NASA, the Butterfly Nebula's wings now span more than 3 light-years or about several thousand times wider than the Solar System. Astronomers have studied it for more than a century to understand how it got its distinct butterfly shape while most nebulae expand into space in circular patterns.

On January 12, during the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, a team of scientists presented time-lapse images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) taken between 2009 and 2020.

They discovered strange new processes that drive the growth of NGC 6302 and identified evidence of half a dozen jets of intense wind blowing out of its central star that looks like chaotic crisscross patterns for thousands of years.

LiveScience reported that these jets erupted about 2,300 and 900 years ago and pushed matter toward the edges of the nebula at about 500 miles per second (800 kilometers per second). Meanwhile, matter closer to the central star has been creeping outward at one-tenth the speed of light, resulting in intricate and asymmetrical structures emerging across the nebula's wings.

Team leader Professor Bruce Balick from the University of Washington said in a statement that the Butterfly Nebula is extreme for the complexity, mass, and speed of its ejection of jets from its central star, which is 200 times hotter than the Sun and slightly bigger than Earth. After years of comparing it to Hubble images, he said he has not seen anything like it.

Researchers noted that it is tricky to explain the nebula's butterfly shape and that it is possible that the central star collided with a hidden companion star or gobbled up some extra gas from another star that resulted in the complex magnetic fields that gave it its signature wings. But this is just a hypothesis and more research is needed to explain NGC 6302's butterfly wings.

How Do Nebulae Form?

As per NASA Space Place, a nebula is a massive cloud of gas and dust in space. Some are formed by the gas and dust ejected by the explosion of a dying star, such as a supernova, while others are areas where new stars are forming. Due to that, certain nebulae are referred to as "star nurseries."

Nebulae are found in the region between stars, which is also known as interstellar space. The Helix Nebula is the nearest known nebula to Earth. It is the remains of a dying star, maybe the Sun. It's around 700 light-years away from Earth. That implies that even if you could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 700 years!

Astronomers use incredibly powerful telescopes to photograph distant nebulae. Many photos of distant nebulae have been acquired by space observatories such as NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.

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