BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Happy Birthday Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990 by astronauts on board the Space Shuttle Discovery. Each year a small portion of its observing time is dedicated to taking a special anniversary image. This year's image is of the Southern Crab Nebula, which is about 7000 light years away in the southern constellation Centaurus.

In the center of the nebula is an interacting binary star system. There's a hot white dwarf and a cooler red giant that one day will also become a white dwarf. The giant is shedding its outer layers and the dwarf's gravity pulls in some of this material. When enough of the material is pulled in, an eruption sends the material outwards, creating the amazing structures seen in the nebula.

What a picture to celebrate Hubble's 29th birthday!.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

The anniversary image for 2018 was the Lagoon Nebula. The nebula is about 5000 light years away - the image shows a part of the nebula that's about four light years across. The whole nebula is about 100 light years across.

In 2017 the anniversary photo showed a pair of interacting spiral galaxies NGC 4298 and NGC 4302. They're 55 million light years from us in the constellation Coma Berenices. NGC 4298 is almost face-on, so we can see the spiral arms. The blue patches are areas of star formation and young stars. NGC 4301, on the other hand, is edge-on to us, so we don't see much of it. There is a little patch of blue, and as for its neighbor, this shows active star formation.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Mutchler (STScI)

The 2016 image was of NGC 7635, also known as the Bubble Nebula. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787 - he'd have been amazed by this image of it! The "bubble" is created by the stellar wind from a massive hot young central star. The nebula lies 11,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

The Hubble has given us so many jaw-dropping images. I am grateful.

Connie, I am too. I was so glad when public opinion pushed NASA to send one final repair and upgrade mission to Hubble before space shuttles were retired. It's provided an amazing combination of scientific discovery and aesthetic appeal.

In 2015 it was Hubble's 25th anniversary and Celestial Fireworks was the image. The giant star cluster and stellar nursery Westerlund 2 is 20,000 light years away in the constellation Carina. The young cluster "contains some of our galaxy's hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. The largest stars are unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds that etch away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud. This creates a fantasy celestial landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys."

In 2014 we were treated to a set of four infrared images of a nearby stellar nursery, the Monkey Head Nebula (NGC 2174). It's about 6400 light years away. Massive hot new stars emit ultraviolet light that carves away the surrounding dust and shapes it into the giant pillars. The ultraviolet light also heats up the dust enough for it to glow in the infrared.

In 2013 the anniversary image was of the Horsehead Nebula. It's a small dark nebula about 1400 light years away in the constellation Orion. It doesn't look dark in the Hubble image because it was taken in the infrared.

The nebula was first noted by Williamina Fleming who saw it on a photographic plate at the Harvard College Observatory.

In 2012 the anniversary image was a spectacular mosaic of the Tarantula Nebula. It was one of the largest composites ever assembled from Hubble photos.

You can find out more about the biggest, brightest nebula in our galactic neighborhood, which is is not for arachnophobes. It's a cosmic spider hundreds of light years across known as the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus). Although the nebula is 170,000 light years away it's so luminous that it can be seen with the unaided eye.