Hubble unveils colourful star birth region on 100 000th orbit milestoneAugust 11, 2008In commemoration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100 000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. During Hubble's 100 000th orbit around the Earth it peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170 000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation", and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at centre, bottom. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. This representative colour image was taken on 10 August, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulphur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen. Hubble Information Centre |
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| Related Hubble Space Telescope Current Events and Hubble Space Telescope News Articles Goddard team develops new carriers for space station In a partnership that exemplifies One NASA, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. teamed up with engineers at NASA's Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers to design, build, and test five new ExPRESS Logistics Carriers, or ELCs, which will be delivered to the International Space Station. 'Dropouts' pinpoint earliest galaxies Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang. Opening up a colorful cosmic jewel box Star clusters are among the most visually alluring and astrophysically fascinating objects in the sky. One of the most spectacular nestles deep in the southern skies near the Southern Cross in the constellation of Crux. Scientists use world's fastest supercomputer to model origins of the unseen universe Understanding dark energy is the number one issue in explaining the universe, according to Salman Habib, of the Laboratory's Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology group. Rebirth of an icon: Hubble's first images since Servicing Mission 4 Astronomers today declared the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory ready for a new decade of exploration, with the release of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. Astronomers discover stars in early galaxies had a need for speed A team of astronomers has measured the motions of stars in a very distant galaxy for the first time and discovered they are whizzing around at astonishingly high speeds-about one million miles per hour, or twice the speed at which the Sun circles our own Milky Way galaxy. Dark Energy From the Ground Up: Make Way for BigBOSS Several ways have been proposed to examine dark energy, in hopes of finding out just what it is. One of them, "supernovae" for short, certainly works: it's how dark energy was discovered in the first place. Other independent techniques, such as weak gravitational lensing and baryon acoustic oscillation, also promise great power but are as yet unproven. Hubble captures rare Jupiter collision The checkout and calibration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been interrupted to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. NASA celebrates Chandra X-Ray Observatory's 10th anniversary Ten years ago, on July 23, 1999, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia and deployed into orbit. Jupiter pummeled, leaving bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean Something slammed into Jupiter in the last few days, creating a dark bruise about the size of the Pacific Ocean. More Hubble Space Telescope Current Events and Hubble Space Telescope News Articles |
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