Using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers captured an extraordinary image of a bipolar planetary nebula known as the Twin Jet Nebula.
This Hubble image shows a bipolar planetary nebula named the Twin Jet Nebula, located about 5,560 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Bipolar planetary nebulae are formed when the central object is not a single star, but a binary system. Studies have shown that the nebula’s size increases with time, and measurements of this rate of increase suggest that the stellar outburst that formed the lobes occurred just 1,200 years ago. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt.
The Twin Jet Nebula, also known as PN M2-9, was discovered by the German-American astronomer Rudolph Minkowski in 1947.
It lies 5,560 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Ordinary planetary nebulae have one star at their center, bipolar nebulae like the Twin Jet Nebula have two, in a binary star system.
Astronomers have found that the two stars in this nebula each have around the same mass as our own Sun, ranging from 0.6 to 1.0 solar masses for the smaller star, and from 1.0 to 1.4 solar masses for its larger companion. The larger star is approaching the end of its days and has already ejected its outer layers of gas into space, whereas its partner is further evolved, and is a small white dwarf.
The characteristic shape of the wings of the nebula is most likely caused by the motion of the two central stars around each other.
It is believed that as the dying star and white dwarf orbit around their common center of mass, the ejected gas from the dying star is pulled into two lobes rather than expanding as a uniform sphere. However, astronomers are still debating whether all bipolar nebulae are created by binary stars.
Meanwhile the Twin Jet Nebula’s wings are still growing and, by measuring their expansion, scientists have calculated that it was created only 1,200 years ago.
The two stars at the heart of the nebula circle one another roughly every 100 years.
This rotation not only creates the wings of the butterfly and the two jets, it also allows the white dwarf to strip gas from its larger companion, which then forms a large disc of material around the stars, extending out as far as 15 times the orbit of Pluto.
Even though this disk is of incredible size, it is much too small to be seen on the image taken by Hubble.
Contestant Judy Schmidt submitted a version of this image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
