哈勃望遠鏡傳回新照片，見證恆星死亡時的燦爛畫面

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.
沒有一種光的消逝比恆星更劇烈。恆星的死亡像狂風驟雨般劇烈，因爲恆星經受劇烈震動，將數量龐大的星體物質拋向周圍的空間。
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.
研究這種情況下被拋出的氣體和塵埃可以幫助我們理解這些恆星是如何死亡的。現在哈勃比以往更詳細地研究了星系中兩顆塵埃最多、氣體最多的恆星的死亡。
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.
這兩個行星狀星雲（取這個名字是因爲最初在18世紀時說這些物體外觀類似行星）名爲NGC 6303，也叫蝴蝶星雲，和NGC 7027。哈勃利用第三代廣域照相機的全波長範圍，即從近紫外到近紅外的範圍，研究星雲內部的湍流過程。

"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.
紐約羅切斯特理工學院的天文學家Joel Kastner說：“我查看了哈勃的檔案，發現此前沒有人利用哈勃第三代廣域照相機的全波長範圍觀察過這些星雲，我很詫異。”
"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."
“通過這些新的多波長哈勃觀測看到的是這些壯觀星雲目前最綜合的視圖效果。我下載傳回的圖像時，感覺自己就像一個進了糖果店的孩子。”
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.
這兩個星雲的前身可能都是恆星，質量是太陽的3-5倍。這些恆星死亡時坍縮成白矮星。（質量大於8個太陽質量的恆星會成爲中子星；大於30個太陽質量的恆星成爲黑洞。）這兩個星雲都有高電離度和高激發度，說明其內部的恆星非常熱。