NGC 6302

Hubble image

NGC 6302, also known as the bug nebula or the butterfly nebula, is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Scorpius. It is about 3.4 thousand light-years away from Earth.

The spectrum of NGC 6302 shows that its central star is one of the hottest stars in the galaxy. Its surface temperature is over 250,000 degrees Celsius. This means the star from which it formed must have been very large.

The central star, a white dwarf, was only recently discovered by the upgraded Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope.

The star now has a mass of about 0.64 solar masses. It is surrounded by a dense disc of gas and dust. This dense disc may have caused the star's outflows to form a bipolar structure like an hour-glass. This bipolar structure shows many interesting features seen in planetary nebulae such as ionization walls, knots and sharp edges to the lobes.

NGC 6302 Media

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  Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302*The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the servicing mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope.*NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.*The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the center.

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  Map of NGC 6302