Planetary Nebula Menzel 3 | Hubble Space Telescope

Planetary Nebula Menzel 3 | Hubble Space Telescope

From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety ant. This dramatic NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope image, showing ten times more detail, reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun-like star in the constellation Norma within our Milky Way galaxy. Distance: 8,000 light years

The Hubble images directly challenge old ideas about the last stages in the lives of stars. By observing Sun-like stars as they approach their deaths, the Hubble Heritage image of Mz 3—along with pictures of other planetary nebulae—shows that our Sun's fate probably will be more interesting, complex, and striking than astronomers imagined just a few years ago. 

Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round? Clues might include the high 1,000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star featured here at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Release Date: Feb. 1, 2001

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