NGC6302 - Butterfly Nebula, Graham Conaty
NGC6302 - Butterfly Nebula, Graham Conaty

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Description

NGC 6302, also known as the Butterfly Nebula, is a bipolar planetary nebula in the constellation Scorpius.

Located at a distance of around 3,800 light-years from Earth, the structure in this nebula is among the most complex ever observed in planetary nebulae.

The central star of NGC 6302 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature in excess of 250,000°C. To put that into context, the surface temperature of the Sun is 5,778°C.

From tip to tip, the wingspan of the Butterfly Nebula has a breadth of over three light-years and travels through space at over 965,000kph.

Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope the data for this image was obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive with post-processing carried out in PixInsight, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.

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