A Cosmic Butterfly’s Delicate Wings: Planetary Nebula NGC 2346 | NOIRLab

A Cosmic Butterfly’s Delicate Wings: Planetary Nebula NGC 2346 | NOIRLab

The Gemini Observatory 8-meter telescope in Chile obtained this high resolution infrared image of the bipolar planetary nebula NGC 2346 and its molecular hydrogen gas. The image is about 1 arc minute on a side: north is up, east is to the left. In contrast, the size of the full moon is 30 arc minutes. 

NGC 2346 is informally known as the Butterfly Nebula. Its most remarkable characteristics are its unusually cool central star, which is a spectroscopic binary, and its unusual shape—like an hourglass. This object is at a distance of 2,300 light-years from our Sun in the constellation Monoceros.

This pair of stars used to orbit one another at a casual distance, but then one of them evolved into a red giant star and enveloped the other one. This means the swallowed star orbited inside of the red giant! This process caused the two to move close together and to eject a ring of gas in the process. Then strong winds from the stars blew gas perpendicular to the ring to form the wings of the "butterfly." Currently these two stars are so close they orbit each other in a period of only 16 days. The two stars are closer together than our Sun and planet Mercury.

Credit: NOIRLab

Release Date: July 9, 2015

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