哈勃望远镜传回新照片，见证恒星死亡时的灿烂画面

Nothing rages against the dying of the light harder than a star. Their death throes are wild and violent as the star is wracked with colossal quakes, throwing vast amounts of stellar material out into the surrounding space.

没有一种光的消逝比恒星更剧烈。恒星的死亡像狂风骤雨般剧烈，因为恒星经受剧烈震动，将数量庞大的星体物质抛向周围的空间。

studying the gas and dust thrown off in such events can help us understand how these stars die… and now Hubble has studied in greater detail than ever before two of the dustiest, gassiest star deaths in the galaxy.

研究这种情况下被抛出的气体和尘埃可以帮助我们理解这些恒星是如何死亡的。现在哈勃比以往更详细地研究了星系中两颗尘埃最多、气体最多的恒星的死亡。

They're two planetary nebulae (so named because initially, these objects were first described as planet-like in the 18th century) called NGC 6303, or the Butterfly Nebula, and NGC 7027. And Hubble has used the full wavelength range of its Wide Field 3 camera - from near ultraviolet to near-infrared - to study the turbulent processes within them.

这两个行星状星云（取这个名字是因为最初在18世纪时说这些物体外观类似行星）名为NGC 6303，也叫蝴蝶星云，和NGC 7027。哈勃利用第三代广域照相机的全波长范围，即从近紫外到近红外的范围，研究星云内部的湍流过程。

"When I looked in the Hubble archive and realised no one had observed these nebulae with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 across its full wavelength range, I was floored," said astronomer Joel Kastner of Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

纽约罗切斯特理工学院的天文学家Joel Kastner说：“我查看了哈勃的档案，发现此前没有人利用哈勃第三代广域照相机的全波长范围观察过这些星云，我很诧异。”

"These new multi-wavelength Hubble observations provide the most comprehensive view to date of both of these spectacular nebulae. As I was downloading the resulting images, I felt like a kid in a candy store."

“通过这些新的多波长哈勃观测看到的是这些壮观星云目前最综合的视图效果。我下载传回的图像时，感觉自己就像一个进了糖果店的孩子。”

Both nebulae are probably descended from progenitor stars around three to five times the mass of the Sun; these progenitors collapsed into white dwarfs when they died. (Stars more massive than eight solar masses become neutron stars; and stars greater than 30 solar masses become black holes.) And both have high ionisation and excitation, indicating the stars inside them are very hot.

这两个星云的前身可能都是恒星，质量是太阳的3-5倍。这些恒星死亡时坍缩成白矮星。（质量大于8个太阳质量的恒星会成为中子星；大于30个太阳质量的恒星成为黑洞。）这两个星云都有高电离度和高激发度，说明其内部的恒星非常热。