Sunday, April 24, 2016
Across The Universe, Happy Anniversary Hubble Space Telescope Edition
(click on image to enlarge)
From NASA: "April 21, 2016: Twenty-six candles grace NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's birthday cake this year, and now one giant space 'balloon' will add to the festivities. Just in time for the 26th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990, the telescope has photographed an enormous, balloon-like bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. Astronomers trained the iconic telescope on this colorful feature, called the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635. The bubble is 7 light-years across — about one-and-a-half times the distance from our sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. The Bubble Nebula lies 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia." Go here for more information, and here for a zoom-able version.