CD-36 11341 NGC 6302

Coordinates

  • X 619
  • Y 65
  • Z 3342
→ Sol: 3,399

Object type

  • Planetary Nebula
  • Star
  • Galaxy
  • HII region
  • Infra-Red source
  • Maser
  • millimetric Radio-source
  • sub-millimetric source
simbad:NGC 6302

Wiki

NGC 6302, also called the Bug Nebula, Butterfly Nebula, is a bipolar planetary nebula in the constellation Scorpius. The structure in the nebula is among the most complex ever observed in planetary nebulae. The spectrum of NGC 6302 shows that its central star is one of the hottest stars in the galaxy, with a surface temperature in excess of 250,000 degrees Celsius, implying that the star from which it formed must have been very large (cf. PG 1159 star).

The central star, a white dwarf, was only recently discovered (Szyszka et al. 2009), using the upgraded Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The star has a current mass of around 0.64 solar masses. It is surrounded by a particularly dense equatorial disc composed of gas and dust. This dense disc is postulated to have caused the star's outflows to form a bipolar structure (Gurzadyan 1997) similar to an hour-glass. This bipolar structure shows many interesting features seen in planetary nebulae such as ionization walls, knots and sharp edges to the lobes.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "NGC 6302", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.