Start the week off with a beautiful new Hubble image of a 'butterfly' nebula

NASA Hubble Telescope captured new photos of the Twin Jet Nebula

(Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt)

Sometimes space is so lovely it puts sci-fi CGI to shame. Late last week, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) released a new photo of the Twin Jets Nebula, or PN M2-9, a "cosmic butterfly" comprised of two stars about the size of the Sun that orbit each other. The bipolar nebula was discovered in 1947 by astronomer Rudolph Minkowski (thus the M in the name), and photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997. But this new image, captured by Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), is much more detailed, and more stunning:

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.