Webb Reveals Hidden Core of Butterfly Nebula, Finds PAHs and Dust

The James Webb Space Telescope has peered through dense dust to reveal the long-hidden core of the Butterfly Nebula, uncovering a complex mix of crystalline minerals, metal-rich jets and carbon-based molecules that together shed new light on how the raw materials for rocky planets are forged. The observations, centered on NGC 6302 about 3,400 light years away in Scorpius, were published Aug. 27 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, known as MIRI, astronomers were able for the first time to pinpoint the nebula’s obscured central star and to map the chemical makeup of its surrounding doughnut-shaped torus of dusty gas. The star is one of the hottest known central stars in a planetary nebula, with a temperature estimated at about 220,000 Kelvin, roughly 395,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers said. The torus and bipolar outflows together produce the nebula’s distinctive winglike shape.

The new spectral data revealed nearly 200 emission lines, each carrying information about atoms and molecules across the region, the study reported. Among the findings were crystalline silicates such as quartz in the torus, irregular sootlike...