NASA releases new Hubble image that's simply breathtaking

NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope has snapped yet another jaw-dropping image of the cosmos that shows a curtain of rainbow dust and gas.

Published
Updated
1 minute & 19 seconds read time

NASA has published a new image captured by its famous Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in service for more than 30 years.

NGC-6530

NGC-6530

Hubble has honed its sensitive instruments on what NASA calls NGC-6530, which is an open cluster that contains several hundred thousand stars. This open cluster is approximately 4350 light-years away from Earth and resides in the constellation Sagittarius. Notably, the image showcases just a portion of NGC-6530, which is sitting within an even larger nebula called the Lagoon Nebula.

The European Space Agency (ESA), which joint-operates Hubble with NASA, explains the Lagoon Nebula is a large interstellar cloud that is made up of gas and dust. The discovery of NGC-6530 came while astronomers were searching the Lagoon Nebula for proplyds, which is a type of protoplanetary disk that forms around a newborn star. Furthermore, newborn stars begin as a convergence of gas and dust that eventually collapses inwards after forming a somewhat of a blob shape.

This blob of gas and dust then flattens out into a disk shape, and over billions of years, the disk turns can turn into a planet. The rough process just outlined is how all solar systems, including our own solar system, form. Researchers were looking for these newborn protoplanetary disks as studying them will unlock more knowledge on the formation of all solar systems, including our own.

"Astronomers investigated NGC 6530 using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. They scoured the region in the hope of finding new examples of proplyds, a particular class of illuminated protoplanetary discs surrounding newborn stars. The vast majority of proplyds have been found in only one region, the nearby Orion Nebula. This makes understanding their origin and lifetimes in other astronomical environments challenging," explains the ESA.

Buy at Amazon

NASA Logo Pullover Hoodie

TodayYesterday7 days ago30 days ago
$29.99$29.99$29.99
* Prices last scanned on 3/27/2024 at 5:59 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.
NEWS SOURCES:phys.org, esahubble.org

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms. Instead of typical FPS, Jak holds a very special spot in his heart for RTS games.

Newsletter Subscription

Related Tags