Huge butterfly wings in the universe

After being repaired, the Hubble space telescope sent extremely sharp images to Earth, including a butterfly-shaped nebula.

The upper cloud of dust looked like a beautiful butterfly. But, according to scientists from the US Aeronautics Agency, this impressive image is the result of an intense process. The lovely wings of the " giant butterfly " are made up of dust clouds with temperatures up to tens of thousands of degrees Celsius. Dust spreads in space at speeds up to 960,000 km / h (nearly 267 km / h). S). If a spacecraft is launched from Earth at that speed, it can reach the moon after 24 minutes.

Amidst the cloud of gas is a dying star named NGC 6302 . It was five times bigger than the sun. But now this star is blowing out the outer shells of material to form the nebula. Ultraviolet radiation emitted from NGC 6302 makes gas dust glow. Its brightness will increase millions of times in a short time. Then NGC 6302 will turn into a supernova.

The Hubble telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 captured the image. NASA astronauts installed the camera in May during the Hubble upgrade and repair.

NGC 6302 - commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula - is located in the Milky Way. It is about 3,800 light-years away from the constellation constellation. The wings of the " giant butterfly " are more than 2 light years long, about half the distance from the sun to the nearest star (Alpha Centauri).