To commemorate the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 25 years of success, astronomers have captured a stunning new image of a distant star cluster known as Westerlund 2.
This image of the open star cluster Westerlund 2 and its surroundings has been released to celebrate Hubble’s 25th year in orbit. The image’s central region, containing the star cluster, blends visible-light data taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys and near-infrared exposures taken by the Wide Field Camera 3. The surrounding region is composed of visible-light observations taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / A. Nota / Westerlund 2 Science Team.
The Hubble Space Telescope, named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, was launched from the space shuttle Discovery on 24 April 1990.
Every year on or about this date, the Hubble’s science team releases a new image to celebrate and this year is no exception.
The new anniversary image shows a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2.
Discovered by the Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund in the 1960s, the cluster lies in the constellation Carina, roughly 20,000 light-years away.
Westerlund 2 is about 10 light-years across and resides in a giant stellar nursery known as Gum 29.
It is only 2 million years old, but contains some of the brightest, hottest and most massive stars ever discovered.
Some of these stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing torrents of UV light and stellar winds. These are etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born and are responsible for the weird and wonderful shapes of the clouds of gas and dust in the image.
The pillars in the image are composed of dense gas and dust, and are resisting erosion from the fierce radiation and powerful winds.
These monoliths are a few light-years tall and point to the central cluster. Other dense regions surround the pillars, including dark filaments of dust and gas.
The red dots scattered throughout the landscape are a population of infant stars that are still wrapped in their gas and dust cocoons. The blue stars seen throughout the image are mostly in the foreground.
Last year Hubble snapped the mysterious Monkey Head Nebula.
Hubble’s 23d year was marked by a striking image of the Horsehead Nebula, the year 2012 saw the release of a huge mosaic of 30 Doradus – the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood.
Other images include a beautiful view of Saturn, a Tolkien-esque shot of the Carina Nebula, and an amazing cosmic rose made up of a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.
