A color rendition of NGC 6302, the Butterfly Nebula, created from black-and-white exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2019 and 2020. In the violet-colored regions, strong stellar winds ...

Planetary nebulae have been studied for centuries, but astronomers are getting new looks and a better understanding of the structures and compositions of these gaseous remnants of dying stars thanks ...

It might have a spooky-sounding name, but the nearby Tarantula Nebula is a thing of exquisite beauty. This cloud of dust and gas is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud — a satellite galaxy of our ...

Something is amiss in the Butterfly Nebula. When astronomers compared two exposures of this planetary nebula that had been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 and 2020, they saw dramatic ...

Planetary nebulae form when red giant stars expel their outermost layers as they run out of helium fuel — becoming hot, dense white dwarf stars that are roughly the size of Earth. The material that ...