NASA has captured a stunning image of a ‘ space butterfly’ that’s home to hundreds of baby stars.
The ‘butterfly’, dubbed Westerhout 40, is a nebula - a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars form.
The two ‘wings’ are giant bubbles of hot gas, blowing from the hottest and biggest stars in this region.
NASA explained: "The material that forms W40's wings was ejected from a dense cluster of stars that lies between the wings in the image.
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"The hottest, most massive of these stars, W40 IRS 1a, lies near the center of the star cluster."
Westerhout 40 is about 1,400 light-years from the Sun. While this is roughly the same distance as the well-known Orion nebula, the two are almost 180 degrees apart in the sky.
The stunning image is actually the combined result of four images of Westerhout 40, snapped from NASA's Spitzer Space telescope.
Organic molecules made of carbon and hydrogen glow red in the image, while the youngest stars in the ‘butterfly’ glow yellow.
Meanwhile, the stars in the background glow blue, as they have shorter wavelengths.
