NASA shared a gorgeous photograph of space on its Instagram page on Friday. It is a picture of a beautiful space butterfly. The image of a butterfly-like red nebula is a cloud of dust and gas where new stars could form. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope captured this infrared image.
In an Instagram post, NASA explained that what appeared to be a “beautiful space butterfly” was actually “a nursery for hundreds of baby stars.” According to NASA, the butterfly’s “two wings” are gigantic bubbles of “hot, interstellar gas blowing from the region’s hottest, most massive stars.” However, it went on to say that the nebula demonstrated how star formation led to the annihilation of the very clouds that assisted in their formation.
‘Serpens South’ is at the upper right corner of the ‘space butterfly’
Serpens South, the cluster of stars was on the upper right corner of the ‘space butterfly’.
“Another cluster of stars, named Serpens South, can be seen to the upper right of the butterfly in this image. Although both Serpens South and the cluster at the heart of the pictured nebula are young in astronomical terms. Serpens South is the younger of the two. Its stars are still embedded within their cloud; ut will someday break out to produce bubbles like those captured in this image,” NASA added.
People on social media were certainly in awe of the stunning images posted by NASA. Moreover, in 2003, the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope was to provide astronomers with a “unique, infrared vision of the universe” that optical instruments could not capture.