Butterflies?

Behold the Butterfly Planetary Nebula ( Credit: B. Balick (U. Washington) et al., WFPC2, HST, NASA). This has got to be one of the prettiest pictures you have ever seen. It is of a star (M2-9) living its final moments (moments in star time account for some 5,000 odd years), before imploding into oblivion. The wings that you see are the result of a gaseous exterior being cast away. In the center, two stars orbit inside a gaseous disk 10 times the orbit of Pluto.

And to think, I thought I had butterflies in my stomach while waiting for my results.

What is up with Blogger these days? Slow with downtimes in the middle of the afternoon so unlike the usual Google offerings.