Researchers have studied the nebula NGC 6302, also called the Butterfly Nebula. They found strange structures there, the cause of which remains unclear.
When a star with a mass of less than 10 solar masses exhausts its hydrogen stocks to make fusion, it swells and passes to the stage of red giant. Then begins a fusion of helium, until he too is exhausted. And that’s where a planetary nebula forms: the red giants shed their outer layers, and only their core remains as a white dwarf. While most nebulae take on a circular shape, some oddly resemble hourglasses, leaving empty spots of matter. This is the case of the butterfly nebulaalso called NGC 6302, studied by a team of researchers.
Strange changes in the wings of the Butterfly Nebula
Previous studies have shown that this type of star forms when a star is in orbit all around the parent star, attracting part of the expelled dust until it forms the “wings” of the butterfly. But in the case of NGC 6302, something is off: changes have been happening inside the wings since 2009. “The Butterfly Nebula is extreme in the mass, velocity and complexity of ejections from its central star, which is more than 200 times hotter than the sun but barely larger than 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 ejections of matter within the wings, which contribute to leaving at more than 1,000 kilometers per second a part of the matter of the nebula, asymmetrically. Some jets of matter intersect, forming different irregular structures. According to the researchers, these processes might 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 then is to wait for observations by the James-Webb telescope, as its NIRCam instrument, which specializes in infrared, will be able to penetrate through the dust.
