Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 34 years with Dumbbell Nebula (photo)

To write that the Hubble Space Telescope is a myth would be an understatement.

In the 34 years this telescope has been in orbit, it has produced amazing images of the universe. Another exception, for example, is the image Hubble Ultra-Deep Space, which is the most profound view of visible light in our universe ever created. Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers know that our universe is about 13.7 billion years old and that many galaxies have giant holes in their centers. them. It is because of this space-based eye on the universe that scientists have been able to map this amazing phenomenon. dark matter in 3D.

Related: Citizen scientists see more than 1,000 new asteroids in old Hubble Telescope photos

Astronomers took a photo of the Dumbbell Nebula or M76 to celebrate the 34th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. Radiation from the dying central star causes the gases to glow; red from nitrogen and blue from oxygen. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI)

“Many of Hubble’s discoveries were unexpected before launch,” said NASA’s Hubble team. a statement. “The space telescope is the most scientific space astronomy mission in NASA history. Demand to operate Hubble is so high that it is currently oversubscribed by six to one.”

So, to celebrate Hubble’s 34th anniversary, astronomers released a new image the telescope took of the Dumbbell Nebula, or M76, which is a double, growing cloud of gas. shed by the central dying star.

Located 3,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus, M76 is like a “balloon wrapped around the waist,” bordering a bright ring of ejected gas and dust. it is the central star when it runs out of fuel. The star is burning at a temperature of more than 130,000 degrees Celsius (250,000 degrees Fahrenheit) – about 24 times the temperature of the sun’s surface, making it one of the hottest remnants of stars the most famous.

As seen in the Hubble image, the outer layers of the star form a dumbbell-shaped ring around it, containing many dense knots of gas and dust from 17 billion kilometers to at 56 billion km (10.6 billion to 34.8 billion km) the mass of all three Earths. It is possible that this ring was created by a young star, although the star itself is not visible in any of the Hubble images. Another theory is that the faint star may have been cut off and consumed by the central star, according to NASA.

The objects seen in the picture are blasting through space at a speed of two million miles per hour. “That’s fast enough to go from the Earth to the Moon in seven minutes!” the Hubble team said in the statement.

Although M76 is described as a “planetary nebula,” it is not associated with any known planets. The subject is a wrong name that came about because astronomers using small telescopes in the 1700s misinterpreted nebulas as planets. Looking at this picture, it is hard to forget that the Hubble telescope is above the Earth’s atmosphere, orbiting our planet about 515 kilometers above the earth. To prevent the telescope from being pulled into Earth’s atmosphere, it was moved around several times over the years. “Telescope”it was designed to be used“and it was revisited by astronauts as part of NASA’s shuttle program. That maintenance capability was lost after the spacecraft was decommissioned in 2011.

NASA estimates the telescope will operate until at least the late 2020s. Sometime in the next decade, the center plans to attach a propulsion module to the telescope to enable a controlled re-entry into the Pacific Ocean or boost the telescope into a high orbit to maintain it high for a long time.

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