# NGC 6302 Hubble 2009.full

- By: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
- Date: 2009-07-27
- Classification: Photograph
- Credit line: http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/f/
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NGC_6302_Hubble_2009.full.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/NGC_6302_Hubble_2009.full.jpg/1920px-NGC_6302_Hubble_2009.full.jpg
- Who can see it: Kids profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302

The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the servicing mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope.

NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the center. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.

The star's surface temperature is estimated to be about 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest known stars in our galaxy.…