April 2006 Calendar - Butterfly Nebula
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The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the "butterfly wing"- shaped nebula, NGC 2346. The nebula is about 2,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros. It represents the spectacular "last gasp" of a binary star system at the nebula's center. At the center of the nebula lies a pair of stars that are so close together that they orbit around each other every 16 days. This is so close that, even with Hubble, the pair of stars cannot be seen as two separate components. Astronomers believe that one of the stars, when it evolved and expanded to become a red giant, actually swallowed its companion star in an act of stellar cannibalism. The resulting interaction led to a spiraling together of the two stars, culminating in ejection of the outer layers of the red giant. Most of the outer layers were ejected into a dense disk, which can still be seen in the Hubble image, surrounding the central star.
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Quote of the Day
Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe. - Albert Einstein
Fact of the Day
It took three years of constant printing to complete Johann Gutenberg's famous Bible, which appeared in 1455 in two volumes, and had 1,284 pages. He reportedly printed 200 Bibles, of which 47 still exist.Word of the Day
spelunker
Pronunciation: /spi-LUNG-kuh/
n : a person who explores and studies caves, especially as a hobby
"I've been a spelunker for many years but still have no idea what I'm doing."
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