“HOW did all this beautiful, crisp structure form?” asks Peter Tuthill. “That’s the million dollar question.”
The structure in question belongs to a nebula just discovered by Tuthill, of the University of Sydney, Australia, and colleague James Lloyd of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. They have called it the Red Square. The object displays a dazzling, gem-like symmetry (Science, vol 316, p 247).
Most striking planetary nebulae are produced by low-mass stars like the sun, which shed their outer layers at the end of their lives. The star at the heart of the Red Square, called MWC 922,…
