NASA shares stunning picture of 'space butterfly'; netizens call it 'mesmerising'

Every now and then, NASA sweeps its fans off their feet by sharing mesmerising photographs of the cosmic entities clicked by its many space telescopes such as Hubble. The agency has did it again with a glittering image that resembles one of the most delicate creatures on Earth- a butterfly. Captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, this space butterfly is a nebula which is formed by stars that were born, lived and died in it. 

Netizens have reacted to the post shared by NASA on Instagram. One user wrote, 'Beautiful', another wrote, 'Ooooh that's awesome'. One Instagram user called it 'mesmerising' while another called it 'So fascinating'.

More about the butterfly nebula

Officially known as Westerhout 40 (W40), the butterfly was discovered in 2014 under the Massive Young Stellar Clusters Study in Infrared and X-rays survey. According to NASA, the W40 is about 1,400 light-years from the Sun, the same distance as the well-known Orion nebula. Anyone wishing to locate the butterfly nebula in the night sky should look 180 degrees from the Orion nebula, NASA says.

What’s more, is that these two nebulae are the two nearest regions in the sky which are producing stars with masses over 10 times greater than the Sun. Taking to Instagram, the agency explained that the two “wings” visible in the image are actually giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars inside the nebula. Since the W40 is also a graveyard of stars, it is also demonstrating how the formation of stars results in the destruction of the very clouds that helped create them.

Explaining the process of star formation, the agency wrote that it all starts with the force of gravity pulling materials in gas and dust clouds to form dense clumps. These clumps then reach a 'critical density' which results in the formation of stars at their cores. "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 (less than a few million years old), Serpens South is the younger of the two", NASA wrote in the captions. 

Image: Instagram/@NASA