APOD 1.4

This weeks APOD is from September 15th and is titled: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula!

This is actually an image of two stars in the center letting off gas to transform from a normal star to a white dwarf. This type of nebula created by the gas is called m2-9 aka butterfly. This photo is taken from 2100 light years away (thats 1.23448496 × 10¹⁶ miles!!!) but we can still see all the amazing colors and beauty in this photo. That also means, though, that we are looking into the past by more than two centuries and it probably looks very different up close now. This amount of gas actually takes thousands of years to dissipate. I chose this photo because I believe it really envelopes how space can be perceived as scary but also can be very beautiful. As the apod says, it really seems that stars always look the most amazing as they die with the colors and the power that they emanate. I think that the thing I like the best about this is that, even though we know so much about these things, we still know almost nothing about it's physical features and processes of this type of nebula. I like to think about what our sky would look like if earth was one of the thousands planets in this nebula. I imagine it kind of like the northern lights but way more colors and multitudes more vivid. And the funniest thing is, I once again unknowingly chose a Hubble image again. This looks like something right out of a science fiction movie with the amount of drama and uniform chaos that surrounds these stars. Just Amazing.