Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  Bug nebula  ·  NGC 6302
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Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302, Bruce Rohrlach
Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302
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Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302, Bruce Rohrlach
Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302
Powered byPixInsight

Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302

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Description

Bug Nebula or Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302, a bipolar planetary nebula in Scorpius.

Skywatcher 200mm/f5, ASI224mc 310 x 8 secs + 101 x 15 secs (1 hr 6.5 min exposure).

NGC 6302 harbours one of the galaxies hottest known stars, and is surrounded by a dense torus of gas with an unusually complex composition. The European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) has detected hydrocarbons, carbonate, water ice and iron in the tight torus that surrounds the inner core of the nebula. This inner torous of dust is thought to have created the bipolar outflow as the star sheds it's outer layers to form this complex and beautiful planetary nebula just 4000 light years away. Around midnight this time of the year this nebula is almost vertically overhead. Whilst invisible to the naked eye and barely visible visually by large telescope, data processing can bring out the features from a small number of signal photons from amongst the sea of noise.

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Butterfly Nebula - NGC 6302, Bruce Rohrlach