This view offers an example of the time when our Sun and planets formed inside such a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago. The jets are a star's birth announcement. They sculpt patterns on the hydrogen cocoon, like laser-light show tracings. These stars are surrounded by circumstellar disks, which may eventually produce planetary systems, and powerful magnetic fields that direct two parallel beams of hot gas deep into space, like a double light saber from science fiction films. This is caused by pencil-thin jets shooting out from newly forming stars outside the frame of view. It looks like a fireworks finale, with several overlapping events. Hubble captures the reddish glow of ionized hydrogen. The bottom of the picture presents a keyhole peek deep into the dark nebula. A diagonal string of fainter accompanying stars looks reddish because dust is filtering starlight, allowing more of the red light to get through. The fine dust scatters the starlight at blue wavelengths.įarther down, another bright super-hot star shines through filaments of obscuring dust, looking like the Sun shining through scattered clouds. The image underscores the fact that star formation is a messy process in our rambunctious universe.įerocious stellar winds, likely from the bright blue star at the top of the image, are blowing through a curtain of dust. To capture this image, Hubble peered through a veil of dust on the edge of a giant cloud of cold molecular hydrogen – the raw material for fabricating new stars and planets under the relentless pull of gravity. The blackness in the image is not empty space, but filled with obscuring dust. Hubble just scratches the surface because most of the star birthing firestorm is hidden behind clouds of fine dust – essentially soot – that are thicker toward the bottom of the image. Hubble's colorful view, showcased through its unique capability to obtain images from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, unveils an effervescent cauldron of glowing gasses and pitch-black dust stirred up and blown around by several hundred newly forming stars embedded within the dark cloud. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and located approximately 960 light-years away. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's AchievementsĪstronomers are celebrating NASA's Hubble Space Telescope’s 33rd launch anniversary with an ethereal photo of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate.ESO 520-21 lies in the constellation Ophiuchus, near the celestial equator. Astronomers call this process “reddening”, and it makes determining the properties of globular clusters close to the galactic centre - such as ESO 520-21 - particularly difficult. This absorption by interstellar material affects some wavelengths of light more than others, changing the colours of astronomical objects and causing them to appear redder than they actually are. A densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, it lies close to the centre of the Milky Way, where interstellar gas and dust absorb starlight and make observations more challenging. By combining ground-based observations with data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers …Ģ0 September 2021: This sparkling starfield, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, contains the globular cluster ESO 520-21 (also known as Palomar 6). This Hubble observation comes from a hoard of data built up to pave the way for future science with the upcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Dedicated amateur astronomers often make intriguing discoveries - particularly of fleeting astronomical phenomena such as supernovae. Whilst most astronomical discoveries are the work of teams of professional astronomers, this supernova was discovered by amateur astronomers from the Backyard Observatory Supernova Search in New Zealand. In 2014 the light from a supernova explosion in NGC 3568 reached Earth - a sudden flare of light caused by the titanic explosion accompanying the death of a massive star. 13 December 2021: In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a side-on view of NGC 3568, a barred spiral galaxy roughly 57 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Centaurus.
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