Every year, the Hubble Space Telescope devotes a small portion of its precious viewing time to taking a special anniversary photo that shows particularly beautiful and significant objects. These images continue to challenge scientists with new and fascinating surprises and fascinate the general public as well. This year, Hubble celebrates this new milestone with a portrait of two colorful nebulae
The iconic images and scientific breakthroughs of the Hubble Space Telescope have redefined our view of the universe.
To commemorate three decades of scientific discoveries, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Center chose this image of one of the many turbulent "star hatcheries" observed by the telescope during its thirty years of operation. The photo shows the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbor NGC 2020, which together form part of a central star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, about 163,000 light-years from Earth. The image was nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef" because it resembles the underwater world.
Hubble continues to help the revolution in modern astronomy but also helps bring the general public closer to the journey of exploration and discovery. Hubble's never-ending, breathtaking sky photographs provide a visual snapshot of his masterful scientific achievements. Unlike any other telescope before it, Hubble made astronomy relevant, exciting, and accessible for people of all ages. The mission has yielded 1.4 million observations to date and provided data that astronomers around the world have used to publish more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers, making Hubble one of the most prolific space observatories in history. The rich data archive alone will fuel astronomy research for generations to come.
A 2014D visualization that includes a wider photograph of the area where the nebulae NGC 2020 and NGC 2 are located in the constellation Dorado (the Swordfish). These two glowing gas clouds, in the center of the frame, are located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Both nebulae are shaped by powerful winds from hot young stars. This photo is part of the sky survey. This visualization was created from images that are part of the Digitized Sky Survey XNUMX. Credit: ESA / Hubble, David de Martin
Every year, the Hubble Space Telescope devotes a small portion of its precious viewing time to taking a special anniversary photo that shows particularly beautiful and significant objects. These images continue to challenge scientists with new and fascinating surprises and fascinate the general public as well.
This year, Hubble celebrates this new milestone with a portrait of two colorful nebulae, revealing how energetic and massive stars sculpt the shape of gas and dust. Although NGC 2014 and NGC 2020 appear separate from each other in the visible light image, they are actually part of a huge star-forming complex. The star-forming regions seen here are dominated by the glow of stars at least ten times more massive than our Sun. These stars have short lives of only a few million years, compared to the 10 billion year lifespan of our Sun.
The twinkling central part of NGC 2014 is a concentration of bright giant stars near the center of the image that have blown out their cocoon of hydrogen gas (colored red) and the dust in which they were born. In the imaging in the ultraviolet field, you see that the cluster of stars illuminates the landscape around it. These massive stars also release strong winds that erode the gas cloud above and to their right. The gas in these regions is less dense, making it easier for the stellar winds to blow the remnants of these explosions through them, creating bubble-like structures reminiscent of brain coral, and they gave the nebula the nickname "brain coral."
In contrast, the blue nebula below NGC 2014 was shaped by a massive star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. This is an example of a rare cluster of stars known as the Wolf-Rayet stars. They are considered the descendants of the most massive stars. Wolf-Rayet stars are very luminous and have a high rate of material loss through the strong winds. The star in Hubble's image is 15 times more massive than the Sun and is releasing powerful winds, which have cleared the area around it. It ejected its outer layers of gas, scooping them into a cone-like shape and revealing its scorching hot core. We see an off-center tilt because the telescope is viewing the cone from a slightly tilted angle. In a few million years, the star may go supernova. The nebula's brilliant blue color comes from oxygen gas heated to about 11,000 degrees Celsius, much hotter than the hydrogen gas that surrounds it.
Stars, both large and small, are born when clouds of dust and gas collapse under the force of gravity. As more and more material falls onto the forming star, it heats up and becomes dense enough at its center to trigger the nuclear fusion reactions that make stars, including our Sun, shine. Massive stars make up only a few percent of the billions of stars in our universe. Yet they play a crucial role in shaping our universe, through stellar winds, supernova explosions and the production of heavy elements.
"The Hubble Space Telescope has shaped the imagination of an entire generation, inspiring not only scientists, but almost everyone," said Gunther Singer, the European Space Agency's science director. "The excellent and long-standing cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency is of utmost importance."
Video: To celebrate Hubble's 30th anniversary, let's look back at the beauty and science behind each of the anniversary images released since 2005. In this video, the European Space Agency also presents the Hubble Space Telescope's very special 30th anniversary image for the year 2020
For information on the European Space Agency website
More of the topic in Hayadan:
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a football-shaped planet spewing metals from its atmosphere
Hubble photographed a mysterious neighboring galaxy in a burst of star formation
Astronomers have prepared the most comprehensive survey of nearby galaxies in the ultraviolet field with the help of Hubble
