Magnificent Ant Nebula
Sometimes my news aggregator collects articles that have nothing to do with entomology. Today I was psyched about that as I learned about a fabulous astronomical body called the Magnificent Ant Nebula:
The Ant Nebula is one of the most striking planetary nebulae known. Planetary nebulae - whose name arises because most are spherical and looked like planets when they were first discovered through older, less powerful telescopes - are glowing structures of gas cast off by solar-like stars at the ends of their lives. The morphology of the Ant Nebula - a bright core, three nested pairs of bipolar lobes and a ring-like outflow - is so unique that it was nicknamed the 'Chamber of Horrors' of planetary nebulae in the late 1950s.Read more about it (and why it's in the news right now) here
You just found out? It has been around for years. :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, right? This is elementary school stuff. j/k .. It's definitely one of my favorite astronimical wonders. I'm also a big ant fan. Those Tiputini ants look pretty amazing! They look like they're made out of precious metals.
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