Butterfly Nebula

This public domain photo is from GRIN, the Great Images In NASA Collection within the NASA image archive.

This colorful image captures two stars in rapid orbit. These stars are orbiting so closely that the larger has stripped the outermost layers from the smaller star. These stripped gases make up the beautiful butterfly-like gas projections visible in this image. They have been blown outwards from the central stars by stellar winds.

This lovely image should have a wide range of uses including integration into background texture collages, canvas for illustrations, or wallpapers.

This image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – NASA. NASA is an Agency of the United States Government, therefore this image is in the public domain.

1.1 Megabyte JPG. Hosted by nasa.gov.