Twin Jet Nebula

This is the Twin Jet Nebula

The Twin Jet Nebula, like many cosmic phenomena, contains sublime beauty arising from incredible violence.

Its story: Two stars, both like our Sun, orbit each other in a binary star system. The stars age, and grow, and over time each expands and ejects material into space. But their spinning distorts the wispy remnant, twisting it like a blown-glass vase.

One star loses its atmosphere entirely and becomes a white dwarf; the other slowly sloughs layers, lighting the remnant from within. The ethereal lobes continue to grow, moving outward at a million kilometers per hour.

EDIT/CLARIFICATION: Since one of the stars is a white dwarf, it’s likely pulling material off its companion, and that’s why it can produce the two jets (from the poles of the white dwarf) giving the nebula such long lobes.

This image is a re-processing of a Hubble Space Telescope image from 1997, incorporating data from the more advanced Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph.

Image creator Judy Schmidt‘s post on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/9732993912/

More amazing space images on Judy Schmidt’s Flickr photostream: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/