A newly released image of a twin jet nebula captured by the Hubble Telescope is being called a "cosmic butterfly" for its highly unique appearance.
Detailed in a press release, the nebula called PN M2-9 is a "bipolar nebula" lies about 2,000 light years from Earth.
"The M in this name refers to Rudolph Minkowski, a German-American astronomer who discovered the nebula in 1947. The PN, meanwhile, refers to the fact that M2-9 is a planetary nebula," NASA stated in its release.
Hubble is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) and its space-based component was launched in 1990. With help from the ESA and Canadian Space Agency, NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 to be the Hubble's successor.
NASA described the new image of the "cosmic butterfly" as such:
"The characteristic shape of the wings of the Twin Jet Nebula is most likely caused by the motion of the two central stars around each other. It is believed that as the dying star and white dwarf orbit around their common center of mass, the ejected gas from the dying star is pulled into two lobes rather than expanding as a uniform sphere. However, astronomers are still debating whether all bipolar nebulae are created by binary stars. Meanwhile the nebula's wings are still growing and, by measuring their expansion, astronomers have calculated that the nebula was created only 1,200 years ago."
