Dying stars that are among the most beautiful objects in the universe tend to line up across the night sky, and astronomers aren’t sure why.
These “cosmic butterflies” — actually a certain type of planetary nebula — all have their own formation histories, and they don’t interact with each other. But something is apparently making them dance in step, scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) have discovered.
“This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one,”study lead author Bryan Rees, of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy. By using images from both Hubble and the NTT we could get a really good view of these objects, so we could study them in great detail.” [Strange Nebula Shapes: What Do You See? (Photos)]
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