A Star Died Giving Birth To Beautiful Cosmic Butterfly 3000 Light Years Away

The universe is large enough to hold countless mysteries that us humans cannot even begin to fathom yet.?

NASA

There are some, however, that we do get to experience and at times, these turn out to be a sight to behold.

Scientists at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have shared with us one such phenomenon recently. Located in a galaxy far far away, a massive cloud of gas was spotted with a clarity like never before and quite astonishingly, the cloud was shaped like a gigantic butterfly.

Now a wonderful sight for all to see, the blob of gas is NGC 2899, a planetary nebula in the Vela constellation, located between 3000 and 6500 light-years away from Earth. The particular nebula is considered to be of a very rare kind.

Butterfly cosmic wonder

NGC 2899 Nebula (Image: ESO)

As per the ESO, such butterfly shaped or bipolar shaped nebulae are very rare, with only about 10–20 percent of planetary nebulae gaining the shape.

As for the reason for its shape, the NGC 2899 comprised of two central stars, one of which recently reached the end of its life. Upon its death, the star “cast off its outer layers.”

The remaining star now interferes with the flow of gas, thus forming the two-lobed shape as observed. There is maximum distance of two light-years within the nebula, from its centre to the edge.

ESO says that the gas within the nebula “reaches temperatures upwards of ten thousand degrees” due to the large amount of radiation from the nebula’s parent star. It is also the cause for the hydrogen gas in the nebula to “glow in a reddish halo around the oxygen gas, in blue.”

Searching cosmic nebula and other rare phenomenon

La Silla European Southern Observatory (ESO) at Coquimbo, Chile (Image: Reuters)

The NGC 2899 in its majestic beauty was captured by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. The VLT used its high-resolution FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph instrument (FORS) for the discovery.

In its previous observations, FORS has helped examine light from a gravitational wave source, research the “first known interstellar asteroid, and has been used to study in depth the physics behind the formation of complex planetary nebulae.”

ESO actively looks for such sights under its Cosmic Gems programme. The effort is an outreach initiative to produce images of “interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes.”