A celestial butterfly emerges from its dusty chrysalis
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - 09:00
in Astronomy & Space
Some of the sharpest images ever made with ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, revealed what appears to be an ageing star giving birth to a butterfly-like planetary nebula. These observations of the red giant star L2 Puppis, from the ZIMPOL mode of the newly installed SPHERE instrument, also clearly showed a close stellar companion.