December 23, 2024

Hubble telescope sees a space ‘snowman’ thousands of light-years away

A Hubble Space Telescope image shows part of the Snowman Nebula, a region filled with warm gas. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)) A brand-new release from the Hubble telescopes huge archive shares an amazing area “snowman” filled with radiant gas.The image reveals the Snowman Nebula, which is a cloud of gas and dust in deep area. The Hubble Space Telescopes sharp eyes got the things from a range of 6,000 light-years away, and rendered the image in a time direct exposure given that the glow of the gas is extremely faint.” Emission nebulas are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby enormous stars that they radiance with their own light,” NASA said in a statement about the brand-new image.Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope pictures of all time!” The radiation from these enormous stars strips electrons from the nebulas hydrogen atoms in a process called ionization,” the statement continues. “As the energized electrons revert from their higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, they produce energy in the type of light, causing the nebulas gas to glow.” The well known telescope got this brand-new image during a study of huge- and intermediate-size “protostars,” or freshly forming stars. Hubble used its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument “to try to find hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet light from the protostars, jets from the stars, and other features,” NASA officials wrote.A Hubble Space Telescope image reveals part of the Snowman Nebula; the areas complete context is provided by information from the Digitized Sky Survey. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology), and DSS; Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)) Hubble isnt quite operating at its finest. In late October, a synchronization error with its internal interactions forced all 5 of its science instruments offline. The group recuperated the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on Nov. 7, and the same Wide Field Camera 3 responsible for this image on Nov. 21. WFC3 is the most heavily used of Hubbles instruments.The observatorys other three instruments remain in a protective “safe mode” as ground engineers continue to carefully repair issues on the 31-year-old observatory. The Hubble team will next address an instrument called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which can observe far-ultraviolet light.Although astronauts on 5 different objectives went to Hubble to fix and upgrade the observatory, no additional check outs are prepared; servicing missions relied on NASAs area shuttle bus program, which ended in 2011. Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook..