A beautiful accident, and some support

The new Hubble image of Mz3, also called the Ant Nebula, came into being because of an accident of scheduling. Bruce Balick of the University of Washington had requested telescope time to image Mz3. So had Raghvendra Sahai at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Both requests were approved.

Balick and Sahai dutifully reported the error, and the Hubble scheduling director decided to give each scientist half the allotted time. Not wishing to have two half-baked pictures, the researchers combined their data, produced separately in 1997 and 1998, into the one image released today.

Coincidentally -- or perhaps not so -- Balick was Adam Frank's thesis advisor a decade ago. The two share an interest in learning what creates the looping planetary nebula structures.

Balick said his Hubble image provides no direct evidence that magnetic fields are behind the colorful shapes, adding that its "pure speculation" to say magnetic fields cause the shapes seen in this or other nebulae.

"On the other hand," Balick says, "that image is awfully difficult to explain without magnetic fields, or something else that we haven't thought of."

Balick said other theories that have attempted to describe the features simply don't work.

"The idea that magnetic fields are shaping the outflows has got to be very, very seriously considered, which it hasn't yet been," he said. "It's our best chance at the moment. But we've been wrong before, and we'll be wrong again."