Hubble Bubble: NASA stuns with latest space snap to celebrate orbiting telescope's birthday
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a breathtaking picture of the Bubble Nebula
This stunning picture shows the Bubble Nebula, a gigantic space cloud of dust and gas roughly 7,000 light years away from us.
The image was captured by NASA's orbiting Hubble Space Telescope , which turned 26 years old this week.
Since launching on April 25th, 1990, the space-dwelling 'scope has captured over a million pictures of the cosmos. And it still sends back around 140 gigabits of raw science data to mission control each week.
“As Hubble makes its 26th revolution around our home star, the sun, we celebrate the event with a spectacular image of a dynamic and exciting interaction of a young star with its environment," said John Grunsfeld, Hubble astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, in Washington, D.C.
"The view of the Bubble Nebula, crafted from WFC-3 images, reminds us that Hubble gives us a front row seat to the awe inspiring universe we live in.”
The Bubble Nebula is seven light-years across. That's about one-and-a-half times the distance from our sun to Alpha Centauri.
"Dense pillars of cool hydrogen gas laced with dust appear at the upper left of the picture, and more “fingers” can be seen nearly face-on, behind the translucent bubble," said NASA.
The team responsible for the Hubble Space Telescope are planning to keep it running up until 2020. At which point it will be replaced by the $8.8 billion successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Since being launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured some amazing pictures of the cosmos. We've collected some of our favourites in the gallery below.