Butterflies in Space

Yes, there are butterflies in space! Not living ones, of course, but BINOs (butterflies in name only).

When encountering the unknown, our minds try to project the familiar onto the unfamiliar. There are at least four objects in the heavens that have been named after butterflies: Three planetary nebulae and a loose cluster of stars.

M6-A is a cluster in the constellation Scorpius that shows faint bilateral symmetry (credit: Ole Nielsen, via Wikimedia Commons).

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The Hubble Space Telescope has...