Behold, the Butterfly Nebula

A telescope in Chile has captured a stunning new picture of a grand and graceful cosmic butterfly. The National Science Foundation's NoirLab released the picture, which was snapped last month by the Gemini South telescope, on the telescope's 25th anniversary on Wednesday. The AP reports that the aptly named Butterfly Nebula is thought to be 2,500 to 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. A single light-year is 6 trillion miles.

At the heart of this bipolar nebula is a white dwarf star that cast aside its outer layers of gas long ago; Space.com notes that it's radiating at a rather toasty 450,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The discarded gas forms the butterflylike wings billowing from the aging star, whose heat causes the gas to glow. Schoolchildren in Chile chose this astronomical target to celebrate the anniversary of the International Gemini Observatory. The twin telescopes, Gemini North on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and Gemini South in the Chilean Andes, are meant to completely scan the entire sky from both hemispheres, notes Space.com