The star or stars at its center are responsible for the nebula’s appearance. In their death throes, they have cast off layers of gas periodically over the past couple thousand years. The “wings” of NGC 6302 are regions of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit that are tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour.
NGC 6302 lies between 2,500 and 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
