James Webb Telescope Sees Life-Like Molecules Taking Shape In The ‘Bug Nebula’s’ Final Breath

This image, which combines infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope with submillimeter observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows the doughnut-shaped torus and interconnected bubbles of dusty gas that surround the Butterfly Nebula’s central star. The torus is oriented vertically and nearly edge-on from our perspective, and it intersects with bubbles of gas enclosing the star. The bubbles appear bright red in this image, illuminated by the light from helium and neon gas. Outside the bubbles, jets traced by emission from ionized iron shoot off in opposite directions. (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, ALMA...