To commemorate 25 years since the International Gemini Observatory achieved full operations, Chilean students selected the stunning Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) as the celebratory image for the Gemini South telescope in Chile.
Operated by NSF’s NOIRLab and located atop Cerro Pachón, the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope captured a breathtaking new image of the glowing, wing-shaped planetary nebula as part of the “Gemini First Light Anniversary Image Contest.”
The contest invited students from the observatory’s host communities in Chile and Hawaii to choose an object that honors the observatory’s quarter-century legacy, with Gemini South’s first light dating back to November 2000.
Known officially as NGC 6302 and nicknamed the Butterfly Nebula or Bug Nebula, this dramatic bipolar structure lies 2,500–3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
Discovered as early as 1826 (though most often credited to Edward Emerson Barnard in 1907), the nebula gets its distinctive winged appearance from a dying star at its center, reported NOIRLab.
Now a scorching-hot white dwarf with a surface temperature exceeding 250,000°C, the star was once a massive red giant that violently shed its outer layers. Slow-moving gas formed a dark equatorial disk, while faster material blasted out from the poles, sculpting the iconic twin lobes that resemble a butterfly in flight.
The vivid new Gemini South image highlights glowing hydrogen in rich red and ionized oxygen in bright blue, revealing intricate ridges and pillars carved by clashes between slow and super-fast stellar winds.
As the central white dwarf bombards the surrounding gas with intense ultraviolet radiation, the nebula shines brightly while enriching interstellar space with heavy elements that will seed future stars and planets.
Captured under NOIRLab’s ongoing Legacy Imaging Program, this portrait not only celebrates Gemini’s scientific milestone but also inspires the next generation of astronomers in the observatory’s host countries.