The Gemini South Telescope, located in Chile, has released a new image of the Butterfly Nebula, one of the most attractive structures in the universe. The photo comes to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the observatory.
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The image highlights the Butterfly Nebula with details of colors and shapes that highlight its vast clouds of gas and stellar dust, highlighting the telescope’s ability to capture distant celestial bodies with high precision.
The Butterfly, officially named NGC 6302, is a bipolar planetary nebula located between 2,500 and 3,800 light-years away, in the constellation Scorpius. The date of its discovery cannot be determined with certainty.
The emission of this type of nebula occurs when a massive star, in the final stage of its life, expels layers of material, creating an expanding envelope of ionized gas around it that glows intensely. In general, these magnificent structures have a circular, planet-like shape.
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But in this case, the shape is far from resembling a spherical planet. The structure resembles a winged creature in flight. This unique shape is the result of the action of the star in its center, as it expels successive layers of gas and dust as it approaches the end of its existence, which adds a special charm to human eyes.
Gemini South’s anniversary marks a quarter-century of the telescope’s scientific contributions to the study of the universe, reinforcing its importance in research into galaxies, star formation and cosmic evolution.