Sunday, September 20, 2009

Saturnebula!


How did I miss posting this?   This is NGC 6302, variously referred to the Bug Nebula, or the Butterfly Nebula, a bipolar (symmetric, two-lobed) planetary nebula located about 4000 light-years away, in the constellation Scorpius.  It is a grand, complex example, beautifully imaged here - one of the first images, in fact, from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.  This is an APOD image.  Click the image here to go to the APOD page.  Click the image there for a higher resolution version of the photo.

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