Twin, where have you been?
Looking for you, obviously. You see the Twin Jet Nebula in shimmering colors visible by NASAHubble. This is not just any planetary nebula; it’s a bipolar nebula.
Unlike ordinary nebulas with one star at the center, this nebula has two stars at the center, making it a bipolar nebula. One star is a small white dwarf while the other is approaching the end of its days. The two stars circle one another roughly every 100 years. It is believed that the dying star has ejected its outer layers of gas into space and is being pulled into two lobes instead of a sphere.
The rotation around one another causes the shape of the wings for this cosmic butterfly. Within the wings are two faint blue patches, which are violent twin jets streaming out into space in a high speed of one million kilometers (621,400 miles) per hour.
Image description: Two-image swipe-through shows two iridescent lobes of material stretch outwards from a central star system. Two stars at...
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