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To celebrate these 34 years, Hubble took a snapshot of the Small Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76 or M76, located 3,400 light years away (NASA, ESA)
The noble and durable Hubble Space Telescopea joint NASA and European Space Agency mission that continually astonishes scientists with its beautiful observations of the vast Universe, completed 34 years of service.
The powerful space observatory was launched on the flight of the shuttle Discovery on mission STS-31 on April 24, 1990, planned to last 15 years and which has been extended to more than double its duration.
A selection of images captured by Hubble in its 34 years of service
To celebrate these 34 years, remote astronomers captured a snapshot of the Small Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76 or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation of Perseus. The astonishing new image of bright gas ejected by a dying star, in this case turns out to look like a “cosmic dumbbell.”
M76 is classified as a planetary nebula, an expanding shell of bright gases that were ejected from a dying red giant star. The star eventually collapses and becomes a hot, ultradense white dwarf. A planetary nebula is not related to planets, but has that name because 18th-century astronomers, using low-power telescopes, thought this type of object looked like a planet.
Planetary nebulae typically have a rounded structure and were so named because they originally resembled the disks from which planets form, when French astronomer Charles Messier first discovered one in 1764.
Since 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has amazed scientists and space lovers (EFE/NASA-ESA)
The Little Bell Nebula was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780 and astronomers first observed it in detail in 1891. Since then, this photogenic nebula has been a favorite of professional and amateur astronomers due to its unique shape.
M76 consists of a ring, seen edge-on as the central bar structure, and two lobes in each opening of the ring. Before the star burned up, it expelled the ring of gas and dust. The ring was likely sculpted by the effects of the star that once had a binary companion.
This dislodged material created a thick disk of dust and gas along the plane of its companion’s orbit. The hypothetical companion star is not seen in the Hubble image, so it could have later been swallowed by the central star. The disk would be forensic evidence of that stellar cannibalism.
The magnetic fields in NGC 1068 are shown as streamlines on a visible-light and X-ray composite image of the galaxy from the Hubble and NuSTAR telescopes and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Europa Press)
The primary star is collapsing to form a white dwarf. It is one of the hottest stellar remnants known, with a scorching temperature of 250,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 24 times the surface temperature of our Sun. The sizzling white dwarf can be seen as a dot in the center of the nebula. A star visible in projection below it is not part of the nebula.
Trapped by the disk, two lobes of hot gas escape from the top and bottom of the “belt,” along the star’s rotation axis that is perpendicular to the disk. They are being propelled by the hurricane-like flow of material from the dying star, which is hurtling through space at 3.2 million kilometers per hour. That’s fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in just over seven minutes.
This torrential “stellar wind” is colliding with cooler, slower-moving gas that was ejected earlier in the star’s life, when it was a red giant. The superhot star’s fierce ultraviolet radiation is causing the gases to glow. The red color comes from nitrogen and the blue from oxygen.
The planet Jupiter, in all its banded glory, was surveyed by the Hubble Space Telescope in these latest images that capture both sides of the planet. (POT)
Since our Solar System is 4.6 billion years old, the entire nebula is just a blip in the cosmological history of time. It will disappear in about 15,000 years. If researchers confirm that the nebula contains evidence of a case of cosmic cannibalism, it could demonstrate the existence of a long-theorized companion to the red giant.
The companion star, once in orbit around the red giant, does not appear in the Hubble image. According to a NASA statement, astronomers believe that the red giant swallowed its companion and, by studying the ring, they could obtain “forensic evidence” of this act of cosmic cannibalism.
Since its collapse, the red giant star has transformed into a dead stellar remnant known as an ultradense white dwarf star. The white dwarf has a scorching temperature of 138,871 degrees Celsius, making it 24 times hotter than the surface of our Sun and one of the hottest white dwarf stars known.
The bright, dazzling contents of the globular cluster NGC 6652 shine in this star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/HUBBLE & NASA, A. SARAJEDINI, G. PIOTTO)
Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has made 1.6 million observations of more than 53,000 astronomical objects. To date, the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, contains 184 terabytes of processed data that are science-ready for astronomers around the world to use in research and analysis.
44,000 scientific articles have been published based on Hubble observations. The space telescope is the most scientifically productive space astrophysics mission in NASA history. Demand for use of Hubble is so high that it is currently oversubscribed by a factor of six to one.
Most of Hubble’s discoveries were not anticipated before launch, such as supermassive black holes, the atmospheres of exoplanets, the gravitational lensing of dark matter, the presence of dark energy, and the abundance of planet formation among stars.
The planet Mars captured by Hubble in 2016 (NASA/Handout via )
Hubble will continue research in these domains and take advantage of its unique ultraviolet light capabilities on topics such as solar system phenomena, supernova explosions, the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, and the dynamical emission of galaxies. And Hubble research continues to benefit from its long base of observations of solar system objects, stellar variable phenomena, and other exotic astrophysics of the cosmos.
“The space telescope is the most scientifically productive space astrophysics mission in NASA history,” according to a NASA statement.
Hubble has undergone several repairs in its long history (REUTERS/NASA)
Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope They work as complements to each other, collecting observations across different wavelengths of light to obtain a sharper, deeper view of the universe, in which astronomers try to unravel the mysteries surrounding supernovae, distant galaxies, exoplanets. and other celestial oddities.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was designed to be complementary to Hubble, not a substitute. Future Hubble research will also take advantage of the opportunity to create synergies with Webb, which observes the universe in infrared light.
The combined wavelength coverage of the two space telescopes expands groundbreaking research in areas such as protostellar disks, the composition of exoplanets, unusual supernovae, galaxy nuclei, and the chemistry of the distant universe.
