Strange structures discovered in the Butterfly Nebula
Researchers have studied the nebula NGC 6302, also called the Butterfly Nebula. They found strange structures there, the cause of which remains unclear.
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When a star ofmassless than 10 solar masses exhausts its stocks ofhydrogento make fusion, it swells and passes to the stage ofred giant. Then begins a fusion of helium, until he too is exhausted. And this is where aplanetary nebulaforms: the red giants expel their outer layers, and only their core remains in the form of a white dwarf. While most nebulae take on a circular shape, some look oddly like hourglasses, leaving empty spots ofmatter. This is the case of the Butterfly Nebula , also calledNGC6302, studied by a team of researchers.
a color rendering of ngc 6302, from black-and-white exposures taken by the hubble space telescope in 2019 and 2020. in purple-colored regions, strong stellar winds have been actively reshaping nebulous wings above for the past 900 years.
bruce balick, university of washington, joel kastner, paula baez moraga, rochester institute of technology, space telescope science instituteStrange changes in the wings of the Butterfly Nebula
Previous studies have shown that this type of star forms when a star is inorbitaround the parent star, attracting some of the expelled dust until it forms the "wings" of the butterfly. But in the case of NGC 6302, something is wrong: changes have been happening inside the wings since 2009 .nebuladu Papillon is extreme in terms of mass,speedand the complexity of ejections from its central star, whose temperature is more than 200 times higher than that of the sun but is barely larger than the Earth , explains Bruce Balick, professor emeritus of astronomy. I've been comparing Hubble images for years and I've never seen anything like it. »
The team discovered strange material ejections within the wings, which contribute to expelling at more than 1,000 kilometers per second a part of the material of the nebula , in a wayasymmetric. Some jets of matter intersect, forming different irregular structures. According to the researchers, these processes could be due to the fusion of the central star with another, but impossible to prove it, for lack of sufficient visibility in the center of the nebula. The next step is then to wait for observations by the James-Webb telescope, because its instrumentNIRCam, specializing ininfrared, will be able to penetrate through the dust.
structural changes within the butterfly nebula between 2009 and 2020. the image reveals the surprisingly complex growth patterns caused by multiple ejections of the nebula's unseen central star over the past two millennia.
lars borchert and bruce balick, university of washingtonSource: websites