Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 25th birthday with stunning 'celestial fireworks' image

Home Top

'I'm a woman': Tearful Bruce Jenner reveals he considered suicide while transitioning to his 'true self' in Diane Sawyer interview which will be his last as a man
Inside Bruce Jenner's new life as a woman: Reality star shows Diane Sawyer the little black dress in secret closet of women's clothing and reveals plans for 'glam room'
Kris Jenner DID know about Bruce Jenner's transition attempt during 1980s: Olympian confessed to wife because he could no longer hide his 36B breasts
$LOS ANGELES, CA ñ April 24, 2015: Bruce Jenner ñ The Inverview\nOlympian and reality-TV star Bruce Jenner shares and exclusive and wide-ranging conversation with Diane Sawyer.\nPhotograph:© ABC "Disclaimer: CM does not claim any Copyright or License in the attached material. Any downloading fees charged by CM are for its services only, and do not, nor are they intended to convey to the user any Copyright or License in the material. By publishing this material, The Daily Mail expressly agrees to indemnify and to hold CM harmless from any claims, demands or causes of action arising out of or connected in any way with user's publication of the material."\n$ 'Kim caught me in a dress... and Kendall and Kylie did too': Bruce Jenner reveals his children kept 'family secret' and shares touching story of how Kanye West help wife accept transition
Bruce's second wife tells how he thought about having a sex change in the 1980s
Furious Kris Jenner hits out at Diane Sawyer for claiming she did not provide a comment on Bruce - and insists he is her 'hero'
Husband and wife whose two dogs mauled father-of-three jogger to death as he begged for help could be freed from prison in just 19 MONTHS after reaching plea deal
The summer glow diet: Pioneering book by nutritionist the stars swear by reveals the simple steps to looking and feeling fab
Bruce Jenner reveals he is a Republican Christian who is 'not a fan' of Obama in interview announcing he is transitioning to a woman
Baltimore police admit Freddie Gray should have got medical attention before van ride - but commissioner won't resign over his death
NBC investigators look into Brian Williams interview on the Daily Show about his reporting from Arab Spring protests
University shuts down as hundreds gather in support of Playboy Air Force vet who was arrested for tackling flag tramplers
How being attractive can ruin your career: Good-looking men get less job offers because they intimidate bosses, says study
Now conspiracy theorists say there is a 'hidden army' on Mars: Absurd theory suggests a bunker, people and missiles can be seen on the red planet
Woman, 82, dies after 'sister and nephew failed to move her from her chair for six months'
Woman, 25, gave birth in office bathroom, cut the cord with cuticle scissors, then sealed the baby in a plastic bag... and hid it in her desk drawer
Charles' and Di's 'secret daughter': Wills and Harry have an IVF sister living in hiding according to outlandish story gripping U.S... So is there a single scrap of evidence?
Missouri Senator personal assistant arrested for 'trafficking meth and date rape drugs from China to exchange for sexual favors'
William and Kate's pre-baby shopping spree: Duke and Duchess of Cambridge spotted relaxing with some retail therapy in London before arrival of child number two
Eric Holder waves goodbye to the Justice Department after six years as America's attorney general
District Attorney demands investigation into allegations reserve deputy 'who shot and killed suspect with a gun instead of using his Taser' received preferential treatment from colleagues
The moment a hiker gets the shock of his life when the volcano he is filming erupts before his eyes
The baseball player who could be paid $70m to leave his team: After divorcing Real Housewife and drug relapse, Josh Hamilton risks being dropped by Los Angeles Angels
EXCLUSIVE: Now Ben Affleck's MOM reveals mistakes in documentary that censored star's family's slave-owning past as she says she did NOT take part in Freedom Summer or Freedom Rides

Nasa scientists in California have released an image of distant giant cluster of 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2
Massive stars are seen feeding regions of dust and gas in the image, sparking new star formation
The image was released to mark the Hubble Space Telescope's 25th anniversary tomorrow
It was launched on 24 April 1990 and, after a shaky start, has had a hugely successful career

Published: 12:36 EST, 23 April 2015 | Updated: 15:24 EST, 23 April 2015

View
comments

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope tomorrow, Nasa has released an image of a fantastic tapestry of stars snapped by the orbiting observatory.

The image shows a giant distant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2 inside a stellar 'breeding ground' called Gum 29, 20,000 light-years from Earth.

In the image massive young stars can be seen feeding a nearby region with the fuel it needs to form new stars.

Scroll down for video

A stellar nursery of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2 located about 20,000 light-years from the planet earth in the constellation Carina is shown in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, released today to celebrate the silver anniversary of Hubble's launch

Hubble was launched on 24 April 1990 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.

Despite a shaky start, when its primary mirror was ground to the wrong shape, Hubble soon began returning fantastic images of the distant universe, to the delight of scientists and the public alike on Earth.

And this latest image is no exception, revealing a fascinating cluster of stars in the constellation Carina.

HUBBLE: KEY FACTS

The telescope, when it was first devised, was ambitious to say the least - it is 43ft (12.3 metres) long and 14ft (4.2 metres wide).

It orbits Earth at a height of about 345 miles (555km) at a speed of 16,000 mph (27,750km/h), with its instruments finely tuned to account for its movement.

It is able to image the universe in near-infrared, visible light and ultraviolet.

It’s estimated that the telescope can continue operating until 2020, when it will overlap with the James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch in 2018.

'Hubble has completely transformed our view of the universe,' 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.'

Hubble captured the image using its Wide Field Camera 3, which pierced through the dusty veil of dust and gas around the stellar nursery using near-infrared light.

The cluster is between six and 13 light-years across but only two million years old, and thus contains some of the hottest, brightest and most massive stars in the galaxy.

Some of the biggest stars in the cluster unleash torrents of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds of charged particles that disrupt the surrounding cloud of hydrogen gas.

Inside the nebula is a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges and valleys made of gas - the fuel for new stars.

Some of the pillars are several light-years tall and point towards the centre of the cluster, while other dense regions surround the pillars.

As the clusters is very young in astronomical terms, it has not had time to disperse its stars into deep space, so it provides astronomers an opportunity to gather information on how clusters like this form.

Experience a flight to Star Cluster Westerlund 2 with Hubble

Hubble's near-infrared imaging camera pierces through the dusty veil enshrouding the stellar nursery, giving astronomers a clear view of the dense concentration of stars in the central cluster, shown

Westerlund 2 is surrounded by the star-forming region Gum 29. The heaviest cluster stars are unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-force winds streaming with charged particles, etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud from where the cluster formed

The red dots scattered throughout the landscape around Westerlund 2 are a rich population of newly forming stars still wrapped in their gas-and-dust cocoons. These tiny, faint stars are between 1 million and 2 million years old and have not yet ignited the hydrogen in their cores. Hubble's near-infrared vision allows astronomers to identify these fledgling stars

The pillars in the star-forming region surrounding Westerlund 2, composed of dense gas, are a few light-years tall and point to the central cluster. They are thought to be incubators for new stars. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, intense radiation from the most brilliant of the cluster stars is creating a successive generation of baby stars. The bluish haze is an indicator of oxygen gas in the nebula

The image is part of a week of celebrations by Nasa to commemorate what is widely regarded as the most important space telescope of all.

'This is really an exciting week for astronomers and people who love astronomy all over the world,' said Hubble scientist Jennifer Wiseman at a televised anniversary celebration at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

Learning about the life cycle of stars was one of the reasons Hubble was built. By operating above distortions and blocking effects of Earth's atmosphere, astronomers hoped to look farther back in time, at generations of stars and galaxies that formed closer to the Big Bang, some 13.7 billion years ago.

But the mission almost start in disaster, when Nasa discovered a manufacturing flaw in the telescope's 7.9ft (2.4-meter) diameter mirror. Corrective optics, installed by space-walking astronauts, saved the day in 1993, the first of five servicing calls by Space Shuttle crews.

'We never thought it would last this long,' said Nasa administrator and former astronaut Charlie Bolden, the pilot on the mission that launched Hubble.

Nasa is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's (pictured) 25th anniversary with a variety of events highlighting its groundbreaking achievements and scientific contributions with activities running April 20-26. In its quarter-century in orbit, the observatory has transformed our understanding of our solar system and beyond, and helped us find our place among the stars

This is one of Hubble's most iconic images: the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation. It shows the pillars as seen in visible light, capturing the multi-coloured glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-coloured elephants trunks of the nebulas famous pillars. The dust and gas in the pillars is seared by the intense radiation from young stars and eroded by strong winds

Here we see one of the universe's most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy's hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on

This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard Hubble, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light

Many of the telescope's most important discoveries turned out to be in areas that didn't even exist when it was launched. Hubble's observations of a particular kind of exploded star helped astronomers realise that the pace of the universe's expansion is ramping up, propelled by some unknown force referred to as 'dark energy.'

Hubble also has imaged a planet beyond the solar system and scanned other planets' atmospheres for telltale chemical fingerprints. The first so-called exoplanet was discovered in 1992, two years after Hubble's launch.

'Hubble has fundamentally changed our human understanding of our universe,' Bolden said.

Nasa hopes to keep Hubble operating through 2020 to overlap with its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in October 2018.