The Twin Jet Nebula

(ESA/Hubble and NASA)

Far away in the universe, what looks like a shimmering, rainbow-colored butterfly is the aptly named Twin Jet Nebula, a two-lobed nebula that creates extending jets of gas in an elongated bubble.

Recently captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, this is not its first appearance. Officially named PN M2-9, it was by German-American astrologer Rudolph Minkowski, hence the “M” in the name. The “PN” refers to the fact that it is a planetary nebula.

What makes the Twin Jet Nebula different is that , versus one like an ordinary planetary nebulae. Bipolar planetary nebulae are versus a single star, reports CBS News. Astronomers have discovered that both stars , ranging from 0.6 to 1.0 solar masses fro the smaller star and 1.0 to 1.4 solar masses for the larger one.

According to CNET, scientists believe that . They were able to calculate this based on the expansion of the nebula’s "wings,". The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that orbiting each other is what creates the wings, causing the nebula to resemble a butterfly. It is believed that a white dwarf will orbit its partner, allowing emitted gas from the dying star to be pulled into two lobes.

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A photo of the Twin Jet Nebula taken Aug. 2, 1997 by the Hubble telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. In this image, neutral oxygen is shown in red, once-ionized nitrogen in green, and twice-ionized oxygen in blue.

(NASA)

As for the colors of the nebula, its glowing and expanding shells of gas of low to intermediate mass. The star has ejected its outer layers, exposing its remnant core which illuminates the layers and creates a rainbow of color.

The subtle blue patches in the center of the nebula may look inconsequential, but streaming out into space at speeds exceeding one million kilometers per hour. The ESA also reports that , precessing across the lobes as they are being pulled by the binary system’s gravity.

Roughly every 100 years, the stars at the heart of the nebula circle one another, creating not only the wings of the “butterfly” and the two jets, but also . This forms a large disc of material around the stars, which extends out as far as . Though it’s an incredible size, it is still too small to be seen in the Hubble Space Telescope's picture.

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April 24 marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope. To celebrate, NASA and the European Space Agency, which jointly run the telecope, released this image of the star cluster Westerlund 2. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/A. Nota/Westerlund 2 Science Team)