NGC 2346 The Butterfly wing nebula
Imaged by Martin S. Ferlito copyright
Gstar-EX Integrating Video Camera
8" SCmidt-Cassegrain on Vixen GP Mount, Stepper Driven.
Information provided by seds.org
NGC 2346. The nebula is
about 2,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of
the constellation Monoceros. It represents the spectacular
"last gasp" of a binary star system at the nebula's center. At the center of the nebula lies a pair of stars that are so
close together that they orbit around each other every 16 days.
This is so close that, even with Hubble, the pair of stars cannot
be resolved into its two components. One component of this
binary is the hot core of a star that has ejected most of its
outer layers, producing the surrounding nebula. Astronomers
believe that this star, when it evolved and expanded to become a
red giant, actually swallowed its companion star in an act of
stellar cannibalism. The resulting interaction led to a
spiraling together of the two stars, culminating in ejection
of the outer layers of the red giant. Most of the outer layers were ejected into a dense disk. Later the hot star developed a fast stellar wind. This
wind, blowing out into the surrounding disk, has inflated the
large, wispy hourglass-shaped wings perpendicular to the disk.
These wings produce the butterfly appearance when seen in
projection. The total diameter of the nebula is about one-third of a light-year,
or 2 trillion miles or 3218688000000 km.
