One of my core interests is space and astronomy. I’m especially fond of looking at the images captured by the Hubble telescope. I’m so glad that NASA decided to fix it.
This is one of my favorite images: NGC 6302 or The Butterfly Nebula. It does live within our Milky Way galaxy, but it’s almost 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
It looks beautiful and serene but it’s not.
According to the NASA site:
“What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes!
A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow.”
That is so interesting! Well, at least to me it is. Space is so vast and endless. Beautiful and yet very dangerous—for us humans at least. I hope that within my lifetime, we will discover a world-changing artifact in space.
Wow that’s amazing! It makes me want to go write something that takes place in space. :-)
It is beautiful. One of my favorites. I love visiting the NASA site—the Hubble takes some really breathtaking pictures of our Universe.
So I must have space on the brain because I’m working on a scene in my WIP right now that’s all about a girl looking through a telescope. I’ve been looking up star names and images. I have a feeling your picture inspired me!