Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2020

28 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2020 SPACE CHRONICLES T his image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 7027, or the “Jewel Bug” nebula. The object had been slowly puffing away its mass in quiet, spherically symmetric or perhaps spiral patterns for centuries — until rela- tively recently when it produced a new cloverleaf pattern. New observations of the object have found unprecedented levels of complexity and rapid changes in the jets and gas bubbles blasting off of the star at the centre of the nebula. [NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)] not been directly observed. Re- searchers suggest this may be be- cause these companions are next to, or have already been swallowed by, far larger and brighter red giant stars. NGC 6302, commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula, exhibits a distinct S-shaped pattern seen in reddish-orange in the image on the previous page. Imagine a lawn sprinkler spinning wildly, throwing out two S-shaped streams. In this case it is not water in the air, but gas blown out at high speed by a star. And the “S” only appears when cap- tured by the Hubble camera filter that records near-infrared emission from singly ionised iron atoms. This iron emission is indicative of ener- getic collisions between both slow and fast winds, which is most com- monly observed in active galactic nu- clei and supernova remnants. “This is very rarely seen in planetary nebu- lae,” explained team member Bruce Balick of the University of Washing- ton in Seattle. “Importantly, the iron emission image shows that fast, off- axis winds penetrate far into the nebula like tsunamis, obliterating former clumps in their paths and leaving only long tails of debris.” The above image of NGC 7027, which resembles a jewel bug, indi- cates that it had been slowly puff- ing away its mass in quiet, spher- ically symmetric or perhaps spiral patterns for centuries — until rela- tively recently. “Something recently went haywire at the very centre, producing a new cloverleaf pattern, with bullets of material shooting out in specific directions,” Kastner explained. !