June 2, 1998
The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.
NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula
Birthday · June 2, 1998
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APOD published June 2, 1998. Credit: Very Large Telescope, ESO. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The Butterfly Nebula is only thousands of years old. As a central star of a binary system aged, it threw off its outer envelopes of gas in a strong stellar wind. The remaining stellar core is so hot it ionizes the previously ejected gas, causing it to glow. The different colors of this planetary nebula are determined by small differences in its composition. This bipolar nebula will continue to shine brightly for only a few thousand more years, after which its central star will fade and become a white dwarf star. The above picture is one of the first ever taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT), a new 8.2-meter telescope located in Chile.
Image credit: Very Large Telescope, ESO