Celestial fireworks
mark Hubble’s 25th
The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life
resemble a glittering fireworks display in the 25th anniversary Hubble Space Telescope image, released
to commemorate a quarter century of exploring the
solar system and beyond.
“Hubble has completely transformed our view of
the universe, revealing the true beauty and richness of
the cosmos” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This vista of starry fireworks and glowing gas is a
fitting image for our celebration of 25 years of amazing Hubble science.”
The sparkling centerpiece of Hubble’s anniversary
fireworks is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called
Westerlund 2, named for Swedish astronomer Bengt
Westerlund who discovered the grouping in the 1960s.
The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground
known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away
from Earth in the constellation Carina.
To capture this image, Hubble’s near-infrared Wide
Field Camera 3 pierced through the dusty veil shrouding the stellar nursery, giving astronomers a clear view
of the nebula and the dense concentration of stars
in the central cluster. The cluster measures between 6
and 13 light-years across.
The giant star cluster is about 2 million years old and
contains some of our galaxy’s hottest, brightest and
most massive stars.
The nebula reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars,
ridges and valleys. The pillars, composed of dense
gas and thought to be incubators for new stars, are a
few light-years tall and point to the central star cluster. Other dense regions surround the pillars, including
reddish-brown filaments of gas and dust.
The brilliant stars sculpt the gaseous terrain of the
nebula and help create a successive generation of
baby stars. When the stellar winds hit dense walls of
gas, the shockwaves may spark a new torrent of star
birth along the wall of the cavity. The red dots scattered throughout the landscape are a rich population
of newly-forming stars still wrapped in their gas-anddust cocoons.
Because the cluster is very young – in astronomical
terms – it has not had time to disperse its stars deep
into interstellar space, providing astronomers with an
opportunity to gather information on how the cluster
formed.
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA),
A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science
Team.