NASA is celebrating the 33rd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope with an exceptionally high-quality image of the NGC 1333 nebula during star birth or formation. The nebula is located in the Perseus molecular cloud, which lies light years from Earth.
In fact, this giant molecular cloud is located 960 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. It contains more than 10,000 solar masses of gas and dust!
The colorful view provided by Hubble, enhanced by its unique ability to acquire images ranging from ultraviolet to near infrared, reveals a bubbling cauldron of glowing gas and black dust stirred and blasted by several hundred newly formed stars embedded in the dark cloud. “. statement from NASA on a lyrical journey.
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Beyond the aesthetic aspect of the images captured by Hubble, these stunning images allow us to visualize what our sun and planets looked like inside such a dusty molecular cloud 4.6 years ago, billions of years ago.
Our Sun did not form in isolation, but rather was embedded in a “frenzied star-birth pool, perhaps more active and massive than NGC 1333,” according to a NASA statement.
Hubble: 33 years of extraordinary images
As a reminder, Hubble was published on April 25, 1990 by NASA astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery. To date, the legendary telescope has made more than 1.6 million observations of nearly 52,000 celestial bodies. This treasure of knowledge about the universe is stored in open access in the archives Mikulsky.
NASA celebrates the 33rd anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope with an ethereal image of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
