’Cosmic red butterfly at first glance..’: What NASA’s stunning picture depicts
- This butterfly nebula is interesting because it demonstrates how the formation of stars results in the destruction of the very clouds that helped create them
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Friday took to its Instagram page to share this stunning image of space which can only be described as a beautiful butterfly. Interestingly, the picture of a butterfly-like red nebula is in fact a cloud of dust and gas where new stars may be born.
NASA has said that what looks like a cosmic red butterfly at first glance is “in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.” This space butterfly is a nebula—a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form.
NASA said that the “two wings” of the butterfly were massive bubbles of “hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region.”
Apart from its obvious beauty, this nebula is interesting because it demonstrates how the formation of stars results in the destruction of the very clouds that helped create them. “Inside giant clouds of gas and dust in space, the force of gravity pulls material together into dense clumps. Sometimes these clumps reach a critical density that allows stars to form at their cores. Radiation and winds coming from the most massive stars in those clouds—combined with the material spewed into space when those stars eventually explode—sometimes form bubbles like those pictured here,” NASA shared.
However, these processes also disperse the gas and dust, breaking up dense clumps and reducing or halting further new star formation. In fact, the material that forms this nebula’s wings was ejected from a dense cluster of stars that lies between them.
“Another cluster of stars, named Serpens South, can be seen to the upper right of the butterfly in this image. Although both Serpens South and the cluster at the heart of the pictured nebula are young in astronomical terms (less than a few million years old), Serpens South is the younger of the two. Its stars are still embedded within their cloud but will someday break out to produce bubbles like those captured in this image,” NASA added.
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Business NewsNewsWorld’Cosmic red butterfly at first glance..’: What NASA’s stunning picture depicts
First Published:15 Apr 2022, 11:13 AM IST
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