The Hubble space telescope has recently captured image of a cosmic butterfly which is in the form of a sparkling twin-lobed nebula. The European Space Agency released a photo on Wednesday showing the Twin Jet Nebula appearing as ‘ethereal butterfly’.

As per experts, inside the pair of lobes there are two huge jets of gas that appear to be streaming away from the star system. This gas is moving at a blistering one million kilometers per hour.

The official name of the Twin Jet Nebula is PN M2-9. The PN denotes that the nebula is designated a planetary nebula and M is used in reference to the person who discovered it first i.e. Rudolf Minkowski.

The Twin Jet Nebula consists of two stars, where its smaller star ranges from 0.6 to 1.0 solar masses, and is a small white dwarf. The larger star, ranges from 1.0 to 1.4 solar masses (Our sun is 1.0 solar masses), isn’t too far behind and is responsible for the light show the Hubble captured.

Researchers are presently focusing on the larger star’s outer layers that are being illuminated by its exposed core. So far they have seen two jets of material streaming in opposite directions due to the gravitational interactions between the pair of stars.

It takes around 100 years for the stars to circle each other, said researchers. Besides giving us one of the most spectacular cosmic images ever seen, the gravitational effects also allow the white dwarf to pull gas from its larger companion star.

This process produces a large disc of material around both the stars that extends way out from the pair of stars.