Hubble celebrates 33 years with an image of a cauldron of glowing gases

Astronomers celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope with an ethereal image of the nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333.

The nebula is found in the Perseus molecular cloud and is located about 960 light-years away.

The color image, taken by Hubble, shows its unique ability to acquire images From ultraviolet to near infraredrevealing a cauldron of glowing gas and dark dust fanned and blown away by several hundred newly formed stars embedded in the dark cloud.

However, Hubble is only scratching the surface; Most of the star-forming storm is hidden behind clouds of fine dust – mainly soot – that are thicker in the lower part of the image. dark areas in the image They are not empty spacesbut full of veiled dust.

To capture this image, Hubble peered through a veil of dust at the edge of a giant cloud of cold molecular hydrogen — the raw material for making new stars and planets under the harsh influence of gravity.

The photo confirms the fact that Star formation is a turbulent process In a lively universe.

Intense stellar winds, most likely from the bright blue star at the top of the image She blows into a curtain of dust. Fine dust scatters starlight into bluer wavelengths.

minimum, Another very bright and hot star It shines through strands of opaque dust, like the sun shining through scattered clouds. A diagonal series of smaller companion stars appear shades of red because dust filters their stars’ light, letting more red light through.

The background of the image is like looking at a dark nebula through a keyhole. Hubble Captures The reddish glow of ionized hydrogen. It feels like the end of a fireworks show, with multiple events overlapping. This is caused by the thinner jets being expelled from the newly formed stars behind the image.

These stars are surrounded circumstantial discs, which can eventually produce planetary systems and powerful magnetic fields that direct two parallel beams of hot gas into space, like twin lightsabers from science fiction movies. they Sculpture patterns in the hydrogen cocoon like laser beams. Planes are an announcement of the birth of a star.

This view is an example of when Our sun The planets formed inside a dusty molecular cloud 4.6 billion years ago. Our sun was not formed in isolation, but was inside a nursery in which stars are forming frantically, and our sun may be more active and massive than ours. NGC 1333.

Hubble was put into Earth orbit on April 25, 1990 by NASA astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery. To date, the legendary telescope has had nearly 1.6 million views of nearly 52,000 celestial targets.

this The treasure of knowledge of the universe Publicly available in the Mikulski Archives for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, and in the Science Archives at eHST (European Hubble Space Telescope) located at the ESAC (European Space Telescope Astronomy Center) of the European Space Agency in Madrid.