Apod 2.3

This week's picture is that of the Butterfly Nebula. The Butterfly Nebula was formed by one star of a binary star system ejecting large amounts of gas very quickly while the core of the star ionized the gas and made it glow the colors we can see or falsely color. The surface temp of the core, now called a white dwarf star, is estimated to be around 250 thousand degrees Celsius. Overall, the hot center of the Nebula is projecting the gas, some of which has been detected to be hydrogen, across light years and the Nebula itself only lies 4000 light years away.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111113.html