Hubble’s 100,000th Pass Showcases Star Birth

Launched in to orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery 18 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 100,000 orbits of planet Earth, taking some of our most iconic space images.

During its 100,000th orbit, it pointed itself towards a small portion of a nebula near star cluster NGC 2074 in the Large Magellenic Cloud (left), and took the accompanying image on the 10th of August. Lying approximately 170,000 light-years away from the Tarantula nebula, the region is a hotbed of stellar birth and creation, possibly sparked by a nearby supernova explosion.

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.

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way, some 160,000 light years away, the area could very well be a massive boon for astronomers and scientists in determining how stars form, and how they evolve, especially in their early lives. Such information could give us valuable insight in to the beginnings of our own galaxy, and possibly the universe.

Posted by Josh Hill.

Article built upon press release from NASA.

Comments

[Lazarou Monkey Terror]

An odd question but perhaps not for this blog: Does anyone have any ideas what life would be like on an earth like planet near the Tarantula (apart from the majestic view of course!)