A beautiful view of a star in its death throes is featured in a gallery of images sent back by the Hubble Space Telescope after its final shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. The planetary nebula NGC 6302, better known as the Butterfly Nebula or the Bug Nebula, is about 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The features that look like dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, blasted away from a dying star bigger than the sun. This picture was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
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