The Butterfly Nebula is among the most beautiful nebulae out there. It's a planetary nebula formed by an aging star throwing out layers of plasma before turning into a white dwarf. New observations have allowed astronomers to track the formation of cosmic dust in this peculiar environment, understanding where the building blocks of planets, including our own, come from. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

At the center of the nebula, also known as NGC 6302, sits one of the hottest stellar objects known: a white dwarf – the end stage of a star not massive enough to go supernova – shining with a temperature of over 220,000°C (almost 400,000°F). Its exact location was not known, but using JWST , which sees in infrared so can

See Full Page