Butterfly effect

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 18 JUNE 2020

As delicate as the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, may look, its wings are churning and burning at 250,000˚C as – like NGC 7027 on the previous page – it splits itself apart on an extremely short timescale. NGC 6302, 3,800 lightyears away in Scorpius, was formerly a huge red giant, 1,000 times the diameter of the Sun. Now in its dying phase, it is spewing out gas and dust as it rapidly casts off its outer layers.

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