The Hubble Space Telescope of NASA/ESA has managed to capture the Twin Jet Nebula, also known as PN M2-9, characterized by its resemblance to a butterfly or winged figure.
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In the image taken by Hubble, one can observe the shimmering colors that highlight the complexity of the nebula, located approximately 2,100 light-years away from Earth and composed of ‘wings’ formed by the interaction of orbiting stars.
The Twin Jet Nebula doesn’t have just one central star but rather two stars at its center, in a binary star system. One of these stars is at the end of its life and has already ejected its outer layers of gas into space, while the other is a white dwarf, a very dense and evolved star.
Within the wings, there are two violent blue jets moving at high speeds, a result of the binary system at the center. The two stars at the center orbit each other every 100 years, creating the wings and allowing a white dwarf to siphon gas from the other, forming a large disk around them.
While there isn’t any coffee in this nebula…
It is one of many nebulae featured in the Astrometrics lab in Star Trek: Voyager! Happy #StarTrekDay! 😉
Known as PN M2-9, or the Twin Jet Nebula, it resides about 2,100 light-years away: https://t.co/zhKlrQ4sGY pic.twitter.com/zBwRQNqflb
— Hubble (@NASAHubble) September 8, 2023
