Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Astronomers have snapped the most symmetrical and dazzling space object of its kind, just 5000 light-years away in the Milky Way.
The object, which the astronomers named the red square, could help solve a 20 year astronomical mystery.
Dr Peter Tuthill of the University of Sydney and Dr James Lloyd of Cornell University describe their research today in the journal Science.
"It's a bit of jewel," says Tuthill. "Everything is quite remarkably symmetrical."
Tuthill and Lloyd discovered the red square surrounding a star in the constellation Serpens, the serpent mythologically associated with the origin of medicine.
Rather than a square, they say the object is an hour-glass shaped cloud of gas and dust called a bipolar nebula.
Tuthill says the cross shape in the image represents two cone shapes placed tip to tip.
The object is bright because it is being illuminated by light from the star at its heart.
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